


melon, fig, and lamb

by ishka



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Splash Free, Drama, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12646842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/pseuds/ishka
Summary: Every moment is borrowed, no day belongs to him. He neither asked to be born nor to be saved, and yet he is indebted to all the gods that ever were for their good graces regardless until the day death hands him his basket, and guides him down the river.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bricker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bricker/gifts).



> well bricc
> 
> i got carried away

Loathe is he of all men to admit his sultan was right.

When he was an infant, they left him on the widest bend of the Iwami riverbank, among the early autumn’s rotted reeds and wild grass. Whether he was left to sink into the thick and viscous earth or set half-heartedly over a bed of slick river rocks is a detail graciously lost to time. He knows he was left without so much as a basket to protect his bare skin or, once the tide inevitably rose with the rains, to serve as a ferry to guide him gently into the afterlife he was destined to rule before he’d ever really lived.

If he happens to think about it at all, though rarely does it bother him, he prefers to think the act was one of deranged desperation, and not one of deliberate cruelty. That maybe it wasn’t his own mother who did it, but that it was whoever she sold him to for her first warm bowl of food in months. Or something equally as worthwhile for a peasant woman unable to raise the child she never intended to keep.

He only knows any of this because secrets never stay as such among the bored and listless, and the whimsical story of his divine deliverance into the open arms of the late and matronly and benevolent (etc., etc.) Miyako Matsuoka was always a step too high above believable for a boy born into as bleak a faithlessness as Sousuke was.

In truth, the General of the Royal Guard’s wife had recently birthed another stillborn, and had pulled a veil of rippled grief over the palace that left no one able to breathe. On her scenic route back from the market, Lady Matsuoka’s assistant happened across an infant’s wail too loud to pretend she didn’t hear. He was lucky. In those days, many abandoned wails went wilfully unattended to. In those days a child’s hollow cry was an omen of ill tiding, drawing attention to another defenseless mouth to feed when there wasn’t enough for those who already had nothing.

Those within the palace walls suffered no such tiresome inconveniences. A healthy baby shut the grieving General’s wife up, nothing more. She was not unkind to Sousuke, though far was she from nurturing. He was not truly _hers_ , after all. The General, as he was always known even to his family, passed on only a few years ago with the final vestiges of his unrelenting criticism spilling from his diseased lips, and Sousuke has since felt nothing in his absence but peace. As for the General’s widow, Sousuke sometimes passes her by in the common areas, ensures she’s doing well, and continues on his way.

The riverbank was the first of many times death visited Sousuke and did not take him by the hand and into its home. It must’ve taken a liking to him back then, all defiant and angry and indignant as he was. Sousuke habitually makes space for it wherever he goes, wherever he sleeps, and leaves offerings of melon and fig and braised lamb among the rotted reeds of the Iwami river at every autumn’s solstice. He engaged this ritual only a week prior in a bid for protection, leaving extra melon when he was unable to find more than a scant offering of lamb, and thought it an equivalent exchange given the circumstances.

Ultimately, every moment is borrowed and no day belongs to him. He neither asked to be born nor to be saved, and yet he is indebted to all the gods that ever were for their good graces regardless his rituals or his unfinished business until the day death hands him his basket and guides him down the river.

And that day has come. It’s here, sweltering under an ever ironic cosmos, as he takes his final steps in this ocean of limitless silence and sand, that he thinks through his thirsting delirium what he determines a noble final thought:

perhaps death doesn’t care for melon.

* * *

 

“I don’t trust them. They were my father’s men.”

Sousuke swallows his sigh. It bubbles uncomfortably in his chest. “With all due respect and few exceptions my lord, they are _all_ still your father’s men. We are obligated to action regardless.”

The sultan scoffs. “They steal from me and they betray me, right from under my nose. I can’t prove it yet, but I will. I see clearer than I ever have in my dreams my uncles practically salivating at the idea of slitting my throat over my throne which was given to me by all rights. I certainly will not agree to this, Captain. Not now.”

“The rogue desert tribes steal from you and betray you directly in front of your nose. Are we to ignore what we know to be true to placate your deafening paranoia?”

“Bite your tongue, or I’ll have it cut out.” The sultan leans forward from his sitting position at the head of the decorated war table, fiery eyes narrowed and glowing through the haze of candlelight. “You do not need it to take orders.”

Sousuke smirks. “You’re getting better at this, my lord. I was very nearly scared.”

“And you believe I’m joking.”

“No, my lord. Not at all. I agree on all accounts I ought to have my tongue cut out.”

The sultan leans back once more and out of the candlelight, hiding among the shadows. Sousuke reads the weariness on his face better than anything, there is no need to obscure it, but the Rin he knows beneath the gaudy gems and gold turns from him just the same. “I am in no mood for you, Sousuke. Where is my Captain?”

“He is here, my lord. And he is doing his job: protecting your sultanate.”

“Placing himself at extreme risk,” the sultan corrects. “One of the only men I trust cannot just decide to fuck off and gallivant into the desert for gods know how long in command of an untrustworthy squad of foot soldiers in order to catch a merry band of bread thieves.”

Sousuke quirks an eyebrow. “Gallivant, my lord?”

“Oh, shut up, you illiterate cow.”

Sousuke chuckles, the rumble of it genuine enough to shake a few lines of stress from between Rin’s eyebrows. His isn’t a life Sousuke would want for himself, or for anyone. To take up the role through the line of succession is a thing of duty, but to take it up and inherit a broken sultanate with corruption so deep that even rats have learned to bribe favors is quite another. He does as he’s able to make it a more bearable undertaking for Rin, but is acutely aware that his influence accounts for little in the scheme of things when the threat of war and famine linger ever precariously on the borders of his exhausted lands.

Since they were boys and forced to be made aware of the state of things too young, Rin was sure he would be assassinated within a year of ascending the throne. He is no puppet as his uncles desired him to be. They do not take kindly to his independence. It has been eighteen months, and Sousuke has not dared to leave his side in all of their twenty some years in fear of this prophecy. Until now. And Rin cannot truly know the reason why, lest it cloud his judgement. Rin is alone in his sphere. He has lost, whether it be through his convictions or through their deaths or disappearances, everyone but Sousuke, and Sousuke has never been able to contain him totally on his own.

The merry band of bread thieves are of course, a distraction. And rats they may be, but the dissemination of information cares little for man’s arbitrary constructs of status. The thieves are by and large traders, and control a settlement hiding the region’s best guarded secret, and Sousuke intends to unearth it for the good of the people. He would not even consider it if the situation weren’t so dire.

“You know I will still go, with our without help.”

“And if I have you court martialed and later quartered for disobeying me?”

“Then I hope you will understand in time why it was worth it.”

A tense silence settles over the war room. Rin tents his fingers, kicking an elbow out to shimmy a golden bangle down his forearm which perpetually catches on the jut of his wrist bone. “What aren’t you telling me, Sousuke?”

“I have told you what I know.”

“Then the secret lies within what you do not _yet_ know.”

“Perhaps. I request once more: supply me provisions and men. I won’t be gone longer than a moon’s cycle at most, I swear it. General Mikoshiba is aware—”

“You, a _Captain_ , would conspire behind my back with my _General_?” the sultan hisses, visibly stung. “Know your place.”

Sousuke moves to soothe, his voice dropping above a gentle murmur by habit in response. “I would do as is necessary for your success whether it please you or not, Rin. You know that.”

Rin swats the olive branch away. “This is the war room. I am your lord.”

“My lord,” Sousuke sighs.

His pride may be injured by it, but contrary to popular opinion Rin is no unreasonable tyrant. Sousuke asks little of his sultan, and in return expects his requests to be considered more seriously should he deign to make them. There are some things at certain times the sultan does not need to know about, for his safety, for everyone’s safety, and unlike his father before him, Rin understands this.

“Fine. Gather your traitorous wolves and our preciously scarce supplies for your fool’s errand into the desert and pray you’re not gutted like a fish at the first opportunity,” he grits through his clenched teeth. “But this conspiracy will not go without due punishment upon your return. I could call this treason.”

“Then with guts or without, you agree I’ll return.”

He sneers. “Hardly. You dare to leave me in the care of General Mikoshiba for upwards an entire month. It is in your personal interest to return lest I ask some priest to damn your soul to oblivion for inflicting upon me such a cursed existence.”

“I don’t believe that’s how it works,” Sousuke laughs. “Yet rest assured, I’ve given the General a thorough rundown of your infuriatingly particular habits should I meet my timely demise.”

Rin rolls his eyes and shoos him off with an unenthusiastic hand towards the ornate heavy double doors. “Take you and your macabre obsession out of my war hall and get on with it before I change my mind.”

Doubtless he nearly doubles over with relief, but he doesn’t reveal it to Rin. Instead he bows in a rare and humble submission. “Thank you. I’ll be gone by sunrise.”

As he heads for the door on wide and newly confident strides, the ever-present death stills him to a stop and says:

_isn’t it a pretty thing, ruby red and ripe, a late harvest off the vine_

“Captain?”

Sousuke looks over his shoulder, but does not allow himself to turn back now. This has to be done. Uneasiness seizes his heart, and he does not discount the cold and vacant feeling that he is looking at Rin as they are for the last time. There’s no returning to the status quo should Sousuke open this door and find something behind it. They’ll be changed forever, if he even returns. “...Be _present_ , Rin. Be on your guard always. Trust no one I wouldn’t.”

Sensing his Captain’s disquiet, Rin’s tone finally relents and softens. It isn’t that Rin doesn’t know intimately the dangers of his position, but that Sousuke needs to know Rin will not begrudge him this mission no matter the outcome. “Then I suppose I won’t be speaking with anyone at all until you return to me in one piece.” His ensuing smile is melancholy and reserved. “After all I am quite alone without you.”

And how dire the situation, and how warped it really is, when staying within Iwami’s walls proves a more dangerous existence than the lawlessness awaiting Sousuke outside them. 

* * *

 

By all drawn conclusions of his cumulative experience in observation, Haru is moments away from an absolute _fit_.

He hides the fine and disapproving line of his mouth behind his hand, elbow cradled by his opposite palm and held close to his body, a slouch on his hip. He scans his gaze up and down the pile of dirt and cloth laid before him, breathes through his nose as if to say something, exhales his thinking better of it, and repeats.

(the pile is a man)

(or was)

The pile moves, a faintest detectable twitch.

(is)

“He wears peculiar colors,” Makoto offers and regrets saying simultaneously.

“What of it?” Haru mumbles.

“The violet dye of his sash hails from Sano territories, in the far East. He is wealthy.”

Haru drops his hands to his sides and moves a flipped over layer of the sash away with the toe of his sandaled foot, revealing a cast-metal pin of thorny vines that Makoto does not recognize right away holding the sash in place over the man’s heart. “He is no wealthy man. He is a dog tempered with gifts. This is a collar.”

“Who is his master?”

“Matsuoka.”

Makoto frowns. He can spot a Matsuoka mongrel from miles away. Were it the case with this near-corpse, he would’ve left it where he found it face-down at the bottom of the dune and kicked more sand over it for good measure. Perhaps that’s untrue. But he would’ve at least bound his arms intentionally uncomfortably tight before lobbing his dead weight over Makkou’s back (the camel, not himself). “That’s not the sultan’s crest.”

“I’ve seen it before, once. It’s…” Haru trails off. “You’d best take it back to where you found it, Makoto, and don’t tell anyone about it.”

He’s sure he does not catch his look of incredulity before it’s already plastered all over his face. “I have to say Haru, if you were going for deterrence with that ominous warning, you’ve failed me miserably.”

Haru’s glare is severe and scathing. “If it weren’t for your maddening propensity for dragging dead and dying things into my house, you’d’ve been none the wiser just the same. Get rid of it.”

“I live here too,” Makoto protests. “And it’s a man.”

“It’s a dog, and a feral one at that. What business does a ranked Iwami soldier have in our desert? Nothing good for us. We do not run a halfway home for the broken, bloody things you find in the world, Makoto, especially not for these savages. Stick to the sick birds and lizards, leave the warm-blooded monsters to the vultures.”

Makoto looks down in sympathy at the pile. It’s a sad, crippled thing. Large, but no monster in this state. The man was in need of immediate medical attention likely a full day prior by now. Makoto did not stop to rifle through the layers of the man’s uniform for any wounds, as his collapse can only be attributed to extreme thirst and exhaustion. Any wounds are secondary to that in this environment and a drink from Makoto’s flask was the first priority, and getting him out of the baking hot sun the second.

“He had no provisions on him, no water, no mount. He was clearly left for dead.”

“Then whoever did it to him has a more sensible head on their shoulders than you.”

Makoto lets slip a grunt of frustration. Though he understands well Haru’s bone-set hatred for Iwami, he is more reasonable than this more often than not. “If it were others from Iwami who left him, then it stands to reason he is not of their depraved ilk.”

“ _Makoto_ ,” Haru snaps. “This is not about why he was left there. This is about who he is and what he has the potential to do to us should he wake up and see that he’s ended up right where he intended to go. He is a danger to all of us, including you. _Put him back_. I should ask you to make sure he doesn’t wake up at all, but for your sake, I’ll trust you to take care of this so long as you truly take him far away from here and leave him with a warning he is not liable to forget.”

One man, one dying man. One man with a connection to them that Haru— _Haru!—_ is afraid of. As if Makoto is capable of ignoring a curiosity this strong. Haru’s request to dump him back into the sands is the same as strangling out what’s left of him right here and now. In that case, out with him goes the secret, and it’s not as if Haru will ever tell him what that secret was.

And that, Makoto thinks, is a load of camel shit.

“All right, Haru. You’ll agree that I leave in the morning? It’s nearly dark and you know I don’t see well by stars.”

Haru sighs, never taking his wary gaze off their stranger. “I’m due to leave tonight for the coast. I can’t wait until morning or I’ll miss the trade ships. How do I know you’ll do this for us, Makoto?”

“I suppose you don’t.”

It was not the response Haru was looking for, if the new charge on the air is anything to go by. Then Haru speaks with a bitter darkness which takes Makoto’s breath away, both in awe of a side he rarely sees in his friend and a certain shock it’s being directed at him. “Give me your word or I’ll slay him right here and be done with it.”

Haru fashions his grip around the hilt of the knife on his hip as he says it, forcing Makoto to take a step forward and place himself between it and the soldier. He has little tolerance for Haru’s bouts of brash action, specifically when it could result in a blood-stained rug. There’s no getting that out. “No need for this. I will take care of him.”

Haru bounces his icy gaze between Makoto and the nearly deceased (or likely deceased. for all of this arguing, he could very well have died in the interim), and slowly releases his grip. “Fine. But truss it up overnight for your safety.”

Makoto lets out a held breath and moves out of the way again. “Like a turkey,” he agrees.

The sun is quickly setting, the shift into autumn still proving an adjustment for everyone as if it doesn’t happen on a reliable cycle every year. “I need to get Kaede’s pack secure and get out before dinner before Nagisa forces me to stay for it.”

“Don’t weigh Kaede down too much this time,” Makoto warns. “An injured camel is not worth the extra sack of grain.”

“I won’t,” Haru belabors with an eyeroll. “And Makoto…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t speak to anyone about this. I mean it. You know how loose tongues are.”

“I do.”

Haru takes one more prod at the pile with his foot, a mild disgust settling into a crinkle on his nose. _“Take care of him.”_

“I will.”

It’s satisfactory enough. Haru nods. “I’ll be back in a few days. I don’t plan to wander.”

Makoto moves to walk him out. “But if you do decide to stay, get us a nice home close to the port? I like to watch the ships.”

“Why would I do that?” Haru mutters. “We have a perfectly good home here.”

“Ah, you’re right,” Makoto agrees automatically. He smiles to smother a stab of disappointment in himself. Haru could think to humor him every once in awhile. “Well, stay out of trouble.”

Haru snorts on his way through the door. They know damn well who the bigger troublemaker is of the two of them and it isn’t him.

Now, to look for those gaping wounds.

* * *

 

Cleaned up, the man looks about exactly as well-off as an Iwami Palace soldier should with the added benefit of a visually... privileged lineage. It’s a shame he’s likely ruthless evil incarnate; tyrant nations clearly feed and work their men _very_ well. A diet and routine much rounder and hardier and robust than the Iwatobi tribe can ever hope to achieve.

Makoto had gotten it in his head early on that as soon as he patched the soldier up (which between the sunburn and the lacerations and the bruising, he’s a veritable quilt of bandaging), he’d simply wake up on the mend and agree to a pleasant secret-revealing conversation before politely excusing himself and returning to whichever Matsuoka doghouse he came from. The one predictable measure of life of course being that nothing goes to plan.

For starters, it’s been a full day since Haru left and the man hasn’t woken up yet, save the occasional surfacing night terror or unintelligible mumbling for no one in particular. Makoto can’t leave him on the off chance he wakes up while Makoto’s gone, and Makoto can only stay a hermit for so long before the others come looking for him. So he’s chosen to outpace that inevitability, and bend the rules Haru set down.

He is certainly taking care of the man, so he didn’t necessarily lie about that, just re-imagined the meaning. And to have a loose tongue, one must have one in the first place, he figures. So when one of his rehabilitated broken, bloody things invites himself over, Makoto lets him inside.

“I think it could be an infection somewhere,” Makoto worries. “He’s hot to the touch and I don’t believe the grimace on his face is there naturally.”

Nagisa’s a physical mirror of Haru the day prior, only with less judgement on his face as he looks the man up and down. He nods once his agreement with the assessment, squats down next to the body on the floor, and places the back of his hand to the man’s forehead. Instantly his hand recoils, and he turns halfway to look up at Makoto, mouthing a sharp _whoa_.

“My fears exactly.” Makoto sighs a whiny groan. “I—”

Nagisa shakes his head dismissively of all that, points to the man, and bounces his brow over a gaudy grin.

Makoto laughs. “Yes, he’s that too. But no good to anyone if he succumbs to infection, and besides he’s… well, he’s Iwami.”

The grin falls off Nagisa’s face to be replaced with a tight-lipped despondency. Haru may hate Iwami as an oppressive force, as some abstract antagonistic adversary that’s hurt his friends, but Haru was born and raised out here. He’s never been under direct rule of Iwami. Nagisa’s experience with the regime is intimately personal. In hindsight, Makoto may’ve gotten ahead of himself in his excitement and didn’t think through inviting Nagisa over as well as he should’ve.

But then instead of storming out and alerting the entire valley, Nagisa sighs the tension from his expression, and waves his hand by a gesture Makoto’s come to understand as _ah, well, what can I do about it?_ He’s not anywhere near fluent in reading Nagisa’s signing even after three years since Makoto found him, but in his defense, Nagisa mostly makes them up as he goes and even then, there are different signs for the same things depending on the mood he’s in. It’s all very complicated and time-intensive to learn for a duly appointed councilman and desert trader only home every other week or so, thank you very much.

“Sorry, Nagisa. That was insensitive of me, wasn’t it?”

He repeats the dismissive gesture with more enthusiasm and slips a smile back on. A grunt startles them both out of the moment, and the deep, pained moan that follows it sets Makoto on edge.

“He really does hurt… Do you have anything for infection? I know it’s difficult to get. I ran out of myrrh ages ago.”

Nagisa reaches for the rag Makoto’s been using to keep the man cool, soaking it in the bowl of water nearby and wringing it out before laying it gently over the man’s head. The care with which he tends to the soldier surprises Makoto, even if it is Nagisa, who never lost his smile after he lost his voice. He doubts he would act with much forgiveness or grace were he in Nagisa’s position, tending to the representation of what cut it out of him.

The man quits fussing as he cools, but the intervals between his semi-conscious episodes shrink with each spell. He’ll wake up soon if he doesn’t take a turn for the worse. Then Nagisa stands and crosses his arms over a puffed-out chest, looking up at Makoto through his lashes and wild golden hair in wait of… something. Ah.

“I have new soaps from the lands across the ocean, in scents you’ve never thought of.”

He shakes his head. Not enough.

“That green silk sheet you love, I’ll part with it.”

_“Go on_ ,” Nagisa gestures.

“Come with me next time I go to the Samezuka bazaar, and you can pick something out—”

Nagisa whoops triumphantly, a rare chirp of voice punching through his silence.

“— within _reason_ , Nagisa. No exotic primates. No explosives.”

_“Deal_ ,” he says decisively. His joy is brief, however, replaced with seriousness. _“There’s something I need to tell you.”_

“Yes, but. One more thing,” Makoto says. In a tight fist, he squeezes the pin he took off the soldier when he re-dressed him in clean clothes, torn over showing it to his friend now that it’s in his grasp. The word _Matsuoka_ is a curse in this desert. But if Haru recognizes it, there’s a good chance Nagisa will as well, and Makoto’s burning curiosity often overpowers his sense of self-preservation. “Have you seen this before?”

Nagisa plucks it from Makoto’s hand, and turns it over a few times. He nods once, cautiously, and hands it back.

“ _Has Haru seen this?”_ he asks, pointing to his eyes and sporting an exaggerated fish-pucker imitation for Haru which never fails to make Makoto snort.

“Yes, he was very strange about it.”

Nagisa chews his lip in deliberation, then is careful to respond slowly so Makoto can read it. _“He might be dangerous, Makoto.”_

Makoto sighs. “Yes, but _why_?”

_“Mat-su-o-ka,”_ he mouths. Then the communication barrier proves difficult, because whatever the reason is, Nagisa grows quickly frustrated over how best to articulate the level of detail it seems it will require to explain. He settles on one name, touching two fingers from one side of his nose to the other: _“Gou.”_

_“Gou?”_ Makoto balks. “What about her? What does she have to do with anything Matsuoka?”

The man chooses then to moan, a deep and long and troubled sound. They watch him tense and strain against himself, looking as if he’s attempting to break free of invisible restraints. Briefly, Makoto allows himself to fear it, as he’s been conditioned to do. The man is injured but he is undoubtedly strong and ferocious. And he may be after one of their own. But were that the case, again, why was he betrayed?

_“Help him_ ,” Nagisa signs. _“Take him away. Don’t tell him about Gou.”_

“What if he’s not what you and Haru think he is?”

Nagisa shakes his head. _“What if he is?”_

He’s right about that; the cost for being wrong outweighs whatever good tidings the man might have brought with him. No one in their community is particularly risk-oriented, given their people consist largely of survivors who managed to escape oppressive rule once already and are not eager to fall under it again.

But… Makoto’s met his share of disreputable people in his life, and they’re never the ones left for dead.

“I want to know why he’s here,” Makoto declares stubbornly. “Will you still get me the frankincense? Please, Nagisa. If he is as you say, I won’t hesitate to do what I need to do to protect Gou. I promise. But we should give him a chance like we give everyone. Gou lives at the outpost. He doesn’t know this. She’s safe regardless of his intentions and I would never endanger her—”

_“But are you?”_

Makoto tilts his chin up. “I don’t need to be safe, I just need to be ready. You know I can handle it.”

Nagisa sighs and wrings his hands together. He isn’t like Haru when it comes to strangers; he’ll agree to help. Not to mention Nagisa would give an enemy more chances to do the right thing than Makoto ever would. Finally, he takes one last long look at the man, and turns back to Makoto with renewed confidence.

_“Okay,”_ he agrees, and holds up a hand to indicate he’s not done yet. He signs for _explosion_ , fingertips shimmying outwards, and nods enthusiastically and gleefully.

“Nagisa!”

He shrugs, unwilling to relent on his newer, steeper terms.

“One firework,” Makoto folds. “And you can’t light it anywhere near my house and you especially can’t tell Haru.”

(because Haru will go find more)

Nagisa grins, and clasps Makoto’s hand between his own to shake on their deal. The pin is pressed between their palms, and Nagisa doesn’t let go right away, that same seriousness from before weighing him down again.

“Oh, right. Now what did you want to tell me?”

He frees one hand, and signs it clearly, an unnerving, foreign fear in his eyes: _water_.

Makoto’s heart stops.


	2. Chapter 2

For months, Rin wept.

Once he was too grown for tears and too groomed for the throne by his father, he hid it, tamped it down deep until only dry and dull eyes stared back at whoever was stupid enough to mention her.

Yet even still after his most difficult days and on his loneliest nights, Sousuke hears him through his private chamber doors. He sees the evidence in the reddened swell of his face should Rin call for Sousuke’s presence and not care if he’s witnessed in such a state.

 _ _I can still hear her begging him__ , he said once, but not directly to him. While Sousuke stood guard near the door, Rin spoke over the half wall of his private balcony and into the night: __I hear him tell her no, I hear her call out for us while we stand there and do nothing.__

Sousuke can still hear her as well, but he decided a long time ago it would be better if Rin didn’t know it. Rin needs someone on his side unconditionally who is dependable, unflappable, ruthless when necessary. While he wears Rin’s uniform, Sousuke is these things. He is for Rin, and he is nothing more. He would never endanger Rin or his people by trying to be anything else.

However Sousuke does not always wear Rin’s uniform. He has desires and aspirations all his own locked away within him, tended after and cared for until such a time as he can pursue them without sacrificing his oath. Beneath his thick skin, Sousuke feels, uncomfortably so. He knows anger and longing and sadness and despair as well as Rin does. He mourns her every day in silence as passionately as Rin does as well. He’s never stopped asking himself how different today would be if they hadn’t lost her.

Which is all to say why when he hears her name— now, here, alive, swim up, wake up— Sousuke hears it from beneath the roaring rapids of fevered blood, and crests the surface after a millenia of swimming down and drowning. He calls back for her; it grinds as stones in his throat.

As quickly as he hears it, she’s gone again, and he sinks.

 _you are a stunning inconvenience,_ death mutters over and over, securing him from the undertow and carrying him to the shore of the river.

Sousuke would laugh if he could.

 _haru was right,_ it says. _i should’ve left you where i found you._

“Who’s that?” Sousuke asks with his first breath.

“Oh!”

Death is wind-worn and sun-kissed. It is scarred and pocked and earthen soft like a broken-in leather, with eyes as inversely verdant, crisp, and sharp. It is more vibrant and more comely than it has any right to be. It is also easily startled, and stares in open shock at Sousuke like _he’s_ the undead entity in the room.

Then the rest of it sets in, and Sousuke could understand how one might see him that way.

“What’s wrong with me?” he gasps and rasps. He’s racked with a violent shiver, and so internally warm his eyes sting by how dry it’s made him. He registers the state of himself all at once, his body newly awakened and distressed and overloaded with pain which seems to originate from everywhere. He rolls onto his side in a reactive attempt to get it __out__ of him, and dry heaves over what tastes like a cloud of ash and dust.

“Shh, shh,” death soothes, “you’re all r— well, you’re alive.”

Alive. “Then who are you?”

“ _Then?_ Did you expect someone else?” a man asks, ceasing his idle, reluctant palming between Sousuke’s shoulder blades.

His jerky movement freshly tore something that was not meant to be torn. He drops his eyes downwards in search of what causes his skin to sear so, and watches blood stain and bloom the front of a shoddily spun peasant’s tunic he doesn’t recall owning.

“Excuse me.” The man pulls him back by his shoulder to lie flat. “You might want to take care.”

Sousuke can’t make sense of a single thing. He was surely mutineered, overpowered, and left for dead in the dune band by the untested infantrymen Rin warned him about, that much he knows. Likely Sano spies who got what they needed or meant to dispose of him when something went awry, though he can’t be sure nor does he remember. Nevermind it for now as he directs his attention to where he is instead. Everything down to the spiced incensed air filling his nose is foreign.

“Who are you?” he asks again, this time with reservation and caution. His weapons are gone, his armor is gone, he can hardly form a complete thought about sitting up much less attempt to. Defenseless as the day he was born with a man near his size in much better shape and in much a better position to attack him should he want to.

“Makoto,” he answers. “I don’t see a purpose in telling you much else until you answer a few questions yourself.”

Despite Sousuke’s blatant incapacitation, Makoto makes no secret of the knife he holds defensively close to his body, blade outward, with the hand he hasn’t been using to move Sousuke about. Sousuke knows the look of a man who would kill. It isn’t cold hatred like one who’s never been around death and killing might assume. Some of the angriest men Sousuke’s known would never kill another. No, it’s the ones with something to live for who do it. Makoto has that aura. He wouldn’t kill if he didn’t have to, but he’d do it without question if that were the only option Sousuke left him. But forcing that ultimatum is furthest from Sousuke’s goal; he didn’t leave Iwami to make more enemies.

“Sousuke,” he says even if Makoto didn’t ask.

“You’re a Matsuoka sword.”

“His Grace prefers emissary.”

“And we prefer to live without fear of slaughter and conquest, so I won’t be referring to you as anything other than what you are if that’s why you’re here.”

“Well then considering I have neither sword nor army to speak of— making a slaughter and conquest quite difficult— Sousuke will suffice, won’t it?”

A simple contentious banter proves to get the better of him. He shuts his eyes over another wave of nausea and pain, and he is breathlessly exerted by the exchange. Still he must press on for information; his mission is far from over.

Makoto drops his gaze along with the knife, setting the blade to his side, out of Sousuke’s reach but not returned to its sheath quite yet. His tone is markedly less defensive when he speaks again. “What spurred you into our desert, Sousuke? Here I thought a servant of Iwami lives and dies without exposure to a single grain of sand.”

“And these preconceived notions you have of our sultanate are in part what bring me to you. My lord wishes for unity. He has tried but he cannot do it alone. It’s made it into the palace kitchens on good faith that the best suited person to help him rebuild peace and trust resides within one of these settlements. I’ve come for her.”

Sousuke is fevered and injured, but he is still alert and trained. Alert enough to know what to look for in Makoto’s reaction to his confession: the squint of his eyes, the quick inhale, the slight pull on his back to sit him up straighter. All of which paint a scene of recognition. Someone’s face flashed across Makoto’s mind as Sousuke spoke, and given Sousuke’s deliberate forgiveness of detail, it was not just any common woman’s.

Perhaps through some play of fate he’s ended up exactly where he needs to be. In that case, Makoto’s become the only man on earth Sousuke needs to win over to get to her, which is more agreeable to winning over an entire tribe as he feared he might have to (and end up dead for).

Makoto ponders it long enough for Sousuke to decide he is more reasonable than most likely are out here. He’s been preparing for outright hostility and rejection, not a quiet contemplation or an unabashed politeness. Curt, cautious as he should be, but polite.

“... No one who is free would willfully give that up to go with you,” he finally deflects. “You’re on a fool’s quest.”

“So I’ve been told,” Sousuke sighs, and winces when it scorches his sand-blasted throat. The tickle of it forces a spasm, and he’s unable to stop the cascading resultant cough. If he could breathe, he would outright sob in agony as every contraction of his core burns and twists and tears through the fit. As it stands the spell ends in a pathetic, hoarse whine, and no sooner it finishes than a cup breaks his watery-eyed line of vision. He accepts the offered water, angling up as best he can to drink while his captor? savior? graciously tips it for him. It is bitter; he’ll have to trust it’s a sort of medicine, and not something meant to kill him.

“There’s a chance one of your wounds festers,” Makoto explains as Sousuke drinks. “They look okay, and I’ve treated them as well as I could with frankincense oil, but I’ve used all I could get. That alone was an expensive trade.”

Sousuke falls back flat onto the sparsely lined floor, swallowing roughly to clear himself to speak. “You said you should’ve left me out there,” he recalls suddenly. “Why would you go so far as to heal me if that’s your conviction?”

“Ah— oh. You heard that, did you? I didn’t mean it, not really.”

“Fine. Then why save me if you find me so dangerous?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Makoto retorts with surprise. “There is enough cruelty in the world without my adding to it and the desert is hardly starved for sacrifices.”

“But I’m a tyrant family’s sword.”

He smiles. “I thought it was just Sousuke now.”

Overtaken with a rare surge of curiosity he can’t suppress, Sousuke turns his head fully to catch and study Makoto’s gaze head-on. His expression lays open in the same way a a baited animal trap does: ulterior, a little too staged to be natural, yet enticingly inviting just the same. Daring Sousuke to give him a reason to cut this short. Makoto’s learned there is no threat to concern himself with from a single defenseless, injured man no matter what the man represents.

It could just be the physical wear, the unmistakable look of a man who has conquered a choking sea of sand and learned to glide atop it, but Sousuke senses something else too. Makoto carries himself with more wisdom and experiences than any person their age should possess, and Sousuke’s made aware of just how little he knows about the world outside his high-walled home in one moment of mutually quiet appraisal. Sousuke looks at Makoto and can’t pin down one single question he most desires an answer to, but Makoto looks upon him like he’s lived this story a thousand times over by now and is merely affording Sousuke the courtesy to be heard before he’s knocked out again and disposed of somewhere far away from here.

“You know who I’m searching for,” he states without frills.

“It stands to reason I know a little about everyone in most places around here.”

A tick of frustration swells when Makoto attempts to lay a wrung-out rag over his forehead as if he’s some shriveled child. He firmly refuses it and attempts to sit up, resulting in a half-measure on his forearms, but communicating his seriousness and impatience for games just the same. “Whether your people are governed by Iwami or not, we protect your lands as a natural barrier to the Sano empire’s aggression. That barrier is perilously weak since the death of my lord’s father destabilized relations. We are in danger, and so __you__ are in danger. This is not without relevance to your people’s interests.”

His words must strike a nerve; Makoto’s soft features turn on him, sharp and defensive.

“You truly believe I do not understand it? You believe us to be stupid?” Makoto replies with a new bitterness. “Then let me explain something to you. Your deceased lord was murdered by Sano conspirators. He was not ill, he was slowly poisoned, and his brothers were complicit in the scheme. The loose lips within your kitchens and stables are heard on all sides. We are well aware of the state of the world, Sousuke, which is why we stay out of it. You must understand that this valley holds the survivors. We are the victims. We are the acceptable collateral damages those of you with riches factor into your budgeting plans for declarations of war. To many here, you are all equally horrific and monstrous and most would rather die keeping you out of their homes than invite you inside them.”

His heart aches in response to a wretched truth they’d always known deep down. Toraichi was inundated with too many faults to be considered benevolent, and caused many hardships for his people which are now Rin’s problems to solve, but he was never evil. His heart was always where it needed to be even if politics ultimately moved his hand. Rin learned much from him; both in terms of the need for an unwavering compassion and how not to rule.

Briefly, though ardently, Sousuke wishes he’d simply been left to die. That’s how this ends anyway if he fails. It’s what the gods want for him, isn’t it? Given that he continuously ends up left for it until man’s short-sighted intervention drags him back and forces him into positions that no street beggar’s bastard has any business being in, like the closest confidant to the most powerful man in the region, or burdened alone with the task of exhuming a desert tomb they all thought was long sealed.

Even then should he find her, what then? That is a burden no one deserves. He knows what he plans to ask of her is too great. But if he returns to Rin empty handed, what’s left? Is he meant to watch the world fall apart around them? Without the only home he’s ever known, is his final grisly function to shield Rin from the crumbling stone until they both collapse under the weight? A meaningless death for them both.

This life is exhausting, this loneliness profound. Yet he has always worked for everything he has, and has always earned his own purpose if it wasn’t there. He cannot return to Rin with no hope no matter how impossible it may seem to secure it.

“I can’t leave. I need rest,” Sousuke declares as his eyes grow heavier. “And time. I need to talk to her—”

“I— no. You can’t stay,” Makoto wavers.

“Her name is Gou,” Sousuke presses on. “She would not have changed it, she is too prideful. She is his sister, his blood. Please—”

Makoto shakes his head. “Do not tell me these things. I can’t help you.”

“She is a leader, natural born—”

_“Sousuke.”_

“If you know her like I believe you do, you also know it to be true!”

To his relief he is correct, and Makoto visibly relents. His shoulders sag, and all pretense of selfless representation gives way to his personal desire to hear more. It’s the naturally curious who prove the strongest allies, in Sousuke’s experience.

“Her people have thought her dead and mourned her for over a decade and she has the power to rally them, Makoto. To unify us, even, before the lesser lords tear this country apart and chum us out to Sano warlords. Then there will be no peace, not for us, not for you, not for anyone settled and peaceful between the seas. Only death and iron rule.” 

Makoto’s initial concern rests with lightly pressing Sousuke at his shoulder back onto his forearms where he’s risen up and strained to be heard. Next he sighs long, rubs his fingertips to his temples, and falls into a deep and weary silence before responding some eon later. “Calm, Sousuke. Your reasoning does not fail to resonate with me. But I am not everyone. I wish yours was the most immediately pressing problem for me to contend with.”

“Whatever it is, we can help,” he finds himself saying with all of the world’s ignorance. That’s the sort of blanket idealism Rin would offer, so desperate is he for thriving lands that he often diminishes the challenge of achieving it. Sousuke should know better, and does not understand what about this place, this man, has riled him so. But then again he is so desperate to correct their situation that he was willfully blind to the dangers of traveling with untested infantrymen Rin warned him about in the first place, so many of his choices have proven shallow as of late.

Makoto’s eyes widen. “I am a leader among my people as well as an opportunist and a barterer by trade. If you could help, I’d’ve brokered a deal with you five minutes ago.”

“Your aid in my search would not go unrewarded. So what is it?”

He is reluctant to divulge, and looks to argue with himself on the matter. A blind faith must win out. “The water is drying up, if we’re to be so close already that we’re trading secrets. This parched land and these people will soon be valueless to anyone. Leaching refugees to be forgotten and neglected.”

“How dire?”

His laugh is a short burst of nerves. “I doubt it to survive another dry season. The next nearest source is the river within your territory, which your people use. Only some on our Council are aware right now. We have wasted a year hoping it to be a figment of our imaginations, but we can’t deny it any longer.”

“Is Gou on this Council of yours?”

“I don’t know who you search for, Sousuke.”

“And you are a terrible liar, Makoto.”

“I’ve nothing to prove to you.”

Sousuke sighs. “We have the water now. It’s all the more reason for me to speak with her. You, as well. Your entire Council. Take me to her. Let me explain myself.”

“Persistent, aren’t you?”

“Desperate,” he corrects. “Help me, Makoto. And I swear on my life I’ll help you.”

“If you hurt anyone—”

“I would _never_ hurt Gou.”

“I didn’t say Gou. I said anyone.”

Every word has slowly become a battle for consciousness. As far as conversations to engage in while injured are concerned, this is certainly his most elaborate endeavor, and he’s newly convinced the bitterant he drank was meant to put him to sleep.

“Give me a chance,” he slurs. “I’m one against an entire population. I’m not ignorant of what would happen to me if I betrayed your trust.”

Makoto falls silent once more. Sousuke either can’t muster the movement or doesn’t bother with pushing Makoto’s hand away yet again when he dots Sousuke’s brow with the chilled towel. In fact, pressed to admit it, it’s pleasant. Makoto’s are not the gentle actions Sousuke’s ever had a chance to experience in his life, only witnessed as performed on others more deserving. Is this what riles him? An act of kindness for a stranger such as himself? An enemy even, which Makoto knew before tending him.

“Haru will not be pleased with me,” Makoto mutters distantly. “Let’s hope you are able to run by the time he returns.”

It means nothing to Sousuke as he drifts towards a deep and healing sleep, to dream of sitting warm and content beneath the Palace garden’s lavish green groves.

* * *

 

Tending after the infirm is not all that exciting. Is it dead? Is it breathing? Is it bleeding? All key questions stuck on loop within one’s head, the answers typically sought being no, yes, and no, if the caretaker is invested in decisively lively outcomes. Makoto is one such caretaker, and by the second full day since Haru left, he’s admittedly grown bored of talking to himself and pretending it’s conversation directed at Sousuke.

Though the threat of infection seems to have passed, Makoto remains diligent in redressing his wounds more often than is necessary. He delicately dabs mild soaps and oils at the little knicks and larger cuts littered about Sousuke’s body so as not to wake him or cause him discomfort, but the necessary reverence has forced a one-sided sense of false intimacy upon Makoto which he doesn’t particularly care for.

The miscalculated killing blow, a large and deep gash across Sousuke’s abdomen, requires a great deal of care especially if Makoto wants to keep that no-yes-no hourly answer check-in consistent. It has closed and clotted more or less as a result of his practiced hand and Sousuke’s forced rest, but any cleaning too violent would surely tear it once more. It needs a few more days before Sousuke himself will be able to strain it much at all, and those are a few more days Makoto does not have to give him. Meaning Makoto expects it to tear, and proper care given now should make that less burdensome when it inevitably happens.

“Oh but no no, you’re not cut out for medicine, Makoto, you’re a better fit on the council,” Makoto mocks as he rolls his eyes. “Better fit. Here that’s another way to say they think me a lame imbecile. I’m just as good as any doctor I’ve met, I’d say, but no, couldn’t possibly handle it now could I? Peacekeeping for me.” He sighs. “This place, I swear. What good are illusions of choice, Sousuke?”

He lifts the roughspun tunic he lent Sousuke and holds a breath, releasing it in relief when the bandage he last applied shows now evidence that it’s soaked up any significant blood since the last dressing. He slowly lifts the double-folded linen to fall in line with Sousuke’s inhales in a bid to make it easier to remove on the chance old, residual blood has glued it to his wound. It comes away with only a small catch.

Makoto presses his fingertips to the inflamed skin directly surrounding the gash. It’s warm, but not feverishly so. Not too swollen or firm, a natural irritation. The wound begins just under his bottom rib, rips jaggedly across, and tapers just above his navel. A light warm water-soaked linen blotting will be enough now. He goes over it a second time, slower, bouncing his gaze between his task and Sousuke’s tranquil face, poised to stop should it cause pain.

Eventually it can be nothing other than that damnable false intimacy moving his hand, because the wound is as clean as it’s going to get, and Makoto’s stomach knots in shame when he strays his touch too far from its clinical intention. He redresses it swiftly. A stranger’s body is none of his business.

He moves to the next wound, a shallow but angry cut crossing the tendon of his neck. An act meant to open his throat, no doubt, which he either fought off or knew how to mitigate.

“Did you choose this?” Makoto wonders from somewhere far away.

“No,” Sousuke utters.

He barely opens his eyes only long enough for Makoto to confirm he answered consciously, then allows them to fall shut again. He swallows roughly, the contraction of it moving Makoto’s fingertips along with it which have wandered yet again to rest over his pulse.

Makoto removes his hands entirely, no longer trusting himself. “Water?” he offers.

Sousuke still looks rundown and his voice is groggy. The dormifacient Makoto keeps on hand is notoriously potent, at least among sporadically insomniac men named Haru. “If you keep the drug out of it this time.”

“You did not strike me as the type to rest when necessary, though I apologize for my deception.”

“I doubt I could move quick enough to worsen myself even if I tried. I’m nearly numb.”

Makoto chooses to leave the wound on his neck exposed. It’s healing quickly. He folds his hands on his lap where his legs are crossed beneath him. “Yes, it should ease the pain.”

“No more of it,” Sousuke repeats. “I don’t like it.”

“If you’ll stay resting, I won’t.”

Sousuke forces his heavy eyes open for the seeming sole purpose of working a glare over Makoto. “And if you promise to take me to her once I can do anything but rest, I will.”

Makoto works up another pitch to deny it, but steps away from it just as quickly. Sousuke will not leave it alone now that he knows, no matter how strongly Makoto claims he’s never met a Gou in his life. Were Sousuke to grow impatient with Makoto’s noncooperation, he would simply leave, and he would not be well-received by anyone else here. That is just as much a death sentence as turning him over to the desert would’ve been. The only place Sousuke is marginally safe is right here.

It’s a conundrum. If Makoto decides it is in no one’s best interest to bring Sousuke to Gou, if Sousuke’s intentions are ulterior and harmful, however small now the likelihood of it is, then Makoto will be tasked with acting in such a way that would say this entire situation never happened. He doesn’t like the thought of that as much as he doesn’t like how voracious his curiosity for Sousuke and where he comes from has become, for Sousuke is not the villain he was raised to fear and loathe. In fact he is passionate and strong, and no mindless tool of war. He is as Makoto is: a person doing his best for what he believes to be right.

“Tell me something,” Makoto redirects. “Who left you out there and why?”

Sousuke clears his dry throat. “My lord has made many enemies with his attempts to clean up the throne, and as his shield my face is well known. Much of our sultanate is unstable and untrustworthy during these transitions. I made an error in judgement by bringing protection with me; in wanting to be able to defend myself against what I may find, I did not consider the true danger would be under my command. If I had to guess, they were implanted Sano spies, or Iwami men on my lord’s uncles’ payroll. The difference between the two these days is negligible.”

Makoto nods, satisfied. “You do not falter in your story.”

“That’s because it is true.”

“Then if your lord is pure and trustworthy as you say, then why wouldn’t his own sister return to her family of her own volition? Why must she be escorted by his personal military?”

“I cannot pretend to know it,” Sousuke confesses. “The best I can do is ask her myself.”

He thinks of her then— laughing with Haru, playing with Nagisa, chastising him— ever since they were children. The threat of losing her no matter the noble reason is suddenly vacating. “Could it be she has a new family now, one she does not want to leave?”

“It could be, but I too have a family, and she is of it. I could not live with myself if I didn’t do everything in my power to bring my lord to peace and prosperity and safety, and that duty extends to her as well so long as I am needed.”

“But you did not choose this life, as you said.”

Sousuke drops his gaze. “No, I did not.”

Makoto’s heart skips. The solemnity in Sousuke’s voice resonates so strongly, it could’ve been a sentiment from his own mouth. “Then what holds you to it? What made them worth dying for?”

“Just… them. They did,” Sousuke answers, as if it’s some simple thing, some obvious conclusion. “Their lives are my life.”

Just as quickly as he wanted to know, he no longer does. Makoto backs off it. The insight may make Sousuke more trustworthy but it doesn’t change the circumstances now. He reaches into a fold of his sash and takes Sousuke’s thorny pin between his fingers.

“Well anyway, this is yours,” he says, handing it over. “The only thing they left you with.”

Sousuke holds it above himself on an outstretched arm, turning it over, thumbing the edges. “How fitting,” he remarks, and abruptly drops his arm to blindly secure the pin to fabric at the top and to the side of his chest.

“I also have your silk.”

“Keep it. Should more than cover the expenses you’ve endured on my behalf.”

“Ah, right.”

“So will you take me to her?”

Something has to give. Makoto can’t keep him here forever, and he won’t be deterred. He decides he wouldn’t be able to hurt Sousuke, not after tending to him and coming to relate to him, understand him. It leaves Makoto one option to preserve Sousuke’s safety, and it may be at the expense of everyone else. There’s no way of knowing what sort of consequences this will reap. He wills down the nausea that comes packaged with such choices. “I will. When I can.”

Sousuke sighs in heavy relief. “Thank you, Makoto.”

He lets the conversation lull, a sinking dread pulling him to silence. It’s all between them for now. But this will involve everyone eventually. What will they do to Makoto for what he’s done? Even Haru turned hostile on him before he knew how involved this would go, and no one else here would give Makoto the benefit of the doubt as readily as Haru would. Funny then, the only time he’s truly feared for his life would stem out of fear of his people’s appetite for retribution.

But beneath his fear and worry, he can’t help but see this for what it may also be as well: a way out.

“What about you?” Makoto asks after some time, when it’s built to bursting in his chest and he can no longer keep it in. “When does it get to be about what you want?”

But that, Sousuke doesn’t seem to have an answer to either.

* * *

 

“You do not have to babysit me,” Sousuke sighs. “Go do whatever it is you do. I’ll stay here.”

“Oh, I do have to stay,” Makoto answers.

“Suit yourself.”

Sousuke’s watched him fidget and twitch all morning now. There’s nothing to do. Sousuke would sleep if he were left to it, but Makoto’s restlessness stirs his own.

Whatever foreign root or flower Makoto slipped him has fully worn off. If Sousuke so much as breathes too deeply, his body creaks and groans like an old wooden ship. But his mobility is improving, and he’s worked himself up to sit, which has done wonders for his headache.

“Can I get you something to eat?” Makoto asks.

His stomach churns at the mere thought. Either due to the drugs or a side effect of recovery, his appetite has not yet returned to him. “For the fiftieth time, no. Do you want me to vomit on your floor?”

“Not especially.”

The room returns to its awkward silence, and Sousuke to his observation. Makoto is not an odd person, per se, but he is distinctly unique. Lifelong exposure to so naturally harsh an environment may make even the most innately disciplined behave off-kilter. Then again, Sousuke interacts with so few on a personal level that this near constant exposure to it has left him in a state of emotional vulnerability proving difficult to define. He is contending with a new culture in a sort of trial by fire; perhaps he is the odd one.

He fights an urge to speak his mind, trained to know there are consequences for doing so, but increasingly confused when those consequences are nowhere to be found here. Whatever he says, Makoto replies to with a matched insight, no matter how prickly or soft Sousuke delivers it. He asks questions, he provides an opinion. It’s all veritable marathon of talking, compared to Sousuke’s typical monosyllabic sprints.

It dawns on him he is taken aback by the freedom to participate in a normal conversation, and his over-analysis of the matter is silly enough to pull a snort from him.

Makoto looks around the room for the cause. “What?”

“Nothing at all.”

Makoto frowns. “You’re very strange.”

Well, that settles it.

“In a good way, maybe,” he continues.

“Maybe?”

“Can’t be too certain.”

“Speaking of strange, how long will you sit there and watch me?”

“As long as I have to.”

“Or is it as long as you want to?”

Makoto frowns deeper. “I don’t want to.”

“I think you do,” Sousuke teases. “I think you’re curious.”

Makoto scoffs, an embarrassed flush darkening his tan. “About what? Met one Iwami servant, you’ve met them all.”

“That so? You truly believe it?”

“I believe you’re teasing me for the sake of it because you’re bored.”

Sousuke shrugs. “I won’t deny it. Where I come from, you’re all called bread thieves, you know.”

Makoto gasps. “I’ve never stolen a thing in my life. I trade. And I certainly wouldn’t steal bread were I a thief.”

“And I apprehended a young man near two years ago who pickpocketed a meats merchant in the marketplace who claimed to be from the desert. So then it’s met one desert thief, met them all, right?”

“A good thief worth their salt wouldn’t get caught in the first place,” Makoto protests, nose turned up. “You simply apprehended a common beggar.”

Sousuke chuckles through the ache it causes him to do so. “And don’t you think highly of yourself?”

Makoto smiles, bowing his head to hide it, and averting his previously challenging stare. Sousuke thinks of the gardens in bloom, and how Makoto moves in similar sun-pulled arches and lulls. He is no diamond in the rough; that would imply unyielding where he is malleable and adaptable. Sousuke is not taken with gems besides, and he can’t take his eyes off this.

When Makoto recovers from his mild embarrassment and untucks his chin from his chest, the new silence settles comfortably. In fact Sousuke would be content to keep it that way, and Makoto comes down from his restlessness to suggest he would be fine with it as well, if there weren’t an impatient knock at the door.

Makoto flies to it as a whirlwind of panic, _no no no_ prattling off beneath his breath. Sousuke would be more alarmed about the visitor if he weren’t so annoyed with them first for winding Makoto right back up after such a hard fought effort to get him to relax.

There’s nothing Sousuke can do about it; he’s not up to the task of diving for cover, but he isn’t expecting Makoto to walk the guest inside either. A deceptively young man, likely much older than he looks by the way he carries himself, walks right over to him and peers down curiously without so much as an _excuse me_. He’s a brilliant gold from curly-headed top to billowy cotton bottoms, and he is not surprised to see Sousuke at all.

“Nagisa!” Makoto scolds. “You can’t just walk in here! You shouldn’t be here at all!”

Nagisa lingers his attention on Sousuke a beat longer, a lick of something wary in the narrow of his eyes that Sousuke doesn’t quite capture before it’s gone.

“All right then,” Sousuke mutters to himself.

“Please, Nagisa, what if someone saw something? You can’t be here.”

Nagisa responds emphatically with his hands, giving Sousuke the puzzle piece he was missing.

“Don’t give me that,” Makoto protests. “You knew he was still here!” He waits while Nagisa responds, then looks to Sousuke. “You will be the death of me, you know that?”

He shrugs.

“Well,” Makoto sighs, “if you want to know that I won’t stop you.”

Nagisa nods and returns to Sousuke again, squatting down to his eye level. Makoto squats off to the side nearby, in what Sousuke hopes is a translation service. Sousuke knows no other language than the one he speaks, and he suspects Nagisa signs more intuitively than structurally. Makoto’s exasperation while watching him supports this theory.

“Well. Do you… no. Who is your sultan?”

“Rin,” Sousuke answers. “Matsuoka.”

He continues.

“Um… Nagisa I don’t know that word.”

Nagisa rolls his eyes, and tries something else.

“Brother? What does that mean?” Nagisa repeats himself, slower. “Oh, just spell it out already!”

Sousuke watches the back and forth with a healthy helping of amusement. He picks up on the repetition of _sultan_ , thinks of _brother_ , and offers his own idea: “Uncle.”

Nagisa voices an excited “ah!” and jostles Sousuke by the shoulder. Sousuke bites down on a groan when he slaps down over a bruise. Then Nagisa continues his line of questioning.

“Do you know the uncles?” Makoto continues.

“I know of them. I do not associate with them, and neither does Rin beyond what is necessary to rule. They don’t represent his goals.”

Whatever it means to Nagisa, is satisfies him. If Sousuke had to venture a guess for a connection, Nagisa was not born a mute, and the neighboring lands overseen by khans, Rin’s uncles, have always been known for their cruel administration of punishment. Then it’s a litmus test of sorts, assuming Nagisa knows who he is already.

“Oh thank god,” Makoto exhales. “You wear me out, Nagisa. Is that what you came here to ask?”

Nagisa falls back onto his rump. Whatever he primarily came for is a longer winded— handed?— explanation. Makoto studies it closely, offering short nods to indicate he’s following along and Nagisa can continue.

Makoto is annoyed by the end of it. “You’re sure? Why today? We just met not two weeks ago.”

Nagisa taps and sweeps two fingers from one side of his nose to the other, followed by a point to the floor. Makoto gasps, looks to see if Sousuke saw it, and reaches halfway for Nagisa's hands to shut him up before presumably remembering Sousuke has no idea what Nagisa said, and aborts the movement.

“I— Oh. Shit,” he curses, then groans. “Of course.”

Nagisa nods his agreement with that one. Then he blatantly talks about Sousuke, complete with pointing and finger wagging, and all Sousuke can do is sit there and accept it until he’s finished.

“No,” Makoto says. “Absolutely not.”

“What?” Sousuke interrupts. “You’re clearly talking about me.”

They continue to talk over him.

“I can’t leave him here.”

Nagisa nods _yes you can_ just as Sousuke says it: “Yes you can.”

“Don’t you start teaming up right before my eyes. Haru might—”

But Nagisa cuts him off, sternly repeating his nose sweeping gesture.

Makoto chews his lip in thought. “You’re right,” he admits. “That would be considerably worse than Haru.”

Nagisa pops to stand, dragging Makoto up by his arm along with him. He says something one-handed to Sousuke, and while Sousuke appreciates Nagisa’s unwavering faith in his ability to learn a new language in five minutes, he looks to Makoto for translation just the same.

“Stay put. We’ve been summoned to Council. Nagisa says if Haru shows up, tell him he said it’s okay. I can assure you though, that will not work.”

Nagisa pouts.

“Not even you could win him over on this, Nagisa.”

“Who the hell is Haru?”

But they ignore him again and tumble into another argument while Nagisa impatiently shoves Makoto out the door.

* * *

 

No discussion of a life or death situation goes down easily, but that doesn’t mean Makoto needs to give into all of the blustering and reactive confrontation currently going around the meeting table. It’s better the Council get the shock out of their systems up front so all discussions for resolution flow smoother. Besides despite his best efforts, Gou and Nagisa corral the Elders’ beligerence with a better grace than Makoto does. He’s too nice, apparently. Not to mention his mind is anywhere but in the room where it should be. 

He could run a farm. Grow the food. Haru could cook it and they could sell it at their own market stall. He could learn a trade— carpentry, embroidery, masonry— and build with the earth. He could stow away on one of those boats, and let it take him where it chooses.

He could do so much more with his life than sit at this table, and debate how to pull wool over the eyes of the masses in preparation for the end of days.

Their settlement’s sole fully-trained physician (sole, as in only, as in no one thought it pertinent to allow an additional apprenticeship before the last fully trained doctor passed on to secure at the very least, a back-up. for instance, makoto) has worked himself up into enough of a monologuing whirlwind of worry for Makoto to snap out of it briefly and pay attention.

“It isn’t just about drinking water. It’s about cooking, bathing, irrigation for the few crops we can get to grow out here,” Rei rants. “If the rains continue to evade us, the river will cease to carry fresh water down from the mountains. The lake reservoir to the north won’t replenish, the groundwater will dry up, and so our wells will drop. Without that constant fresh water refeeding, what we have left will go stagnant— _poison_. It will become unpotable far sooner than we will run out of it.”

The eldest, wiriest of them rumbles to life where he is usually dormant. “If we had been more _devout—_ ”

“That has nothing to do with it!”

“But your flagrant heresy may!”

Makoto sighs to himself and locks his gaze onto the tabletop instead. Panic is a hideous beast, leading the best made persons astray into hysteria. He will stay out of this until he and the other non-Elders can get their heads together to speak privately on it. The Elders are invaluable for perpetuation of traditions and culture, but not so much supportive of adaptation and change. Were he to reveal Sousuke in their presence and present Iwami as the only viable long-term solution to their problem now without a plan, he’d be executed right along with the man within the day, as the Elders hold the majority vote by design of their Council. Any blatant support for curbing Iwatobi’s independence and suggesting they bend to another’s will is charged with treason (an irony not lost on Makoto).

 _“By all means,”_ Gou projects over the unintelligible devolution of arguing, bringing it to a halt, and standing with such force her chair heaves backwards, “you be the ones to tell it to the children that it is _their_ fault our home will become too decayed to inhabit. You tell them they did not pray enough while they learned to survive with nothing, that they did not sacrifice enough when they went days on end without a dinner, that they did not suffer enough to bring the rains to them! You tell them, Elders. And while you’re out in the community spreading fear and fable, we will remain here at the table, speaking reasonably and realistically of our options and working to save everyone we can from a meaningless death.”

She’s more fired up than usual today. Given the circumstances, it’s only appropriate. Nagisa had the right of it; if Makoto were to have skipped this meeting to keep watch on Sousuke, she would’ve shown up in his home before he realized she was at the door, and that is not the smooth, controlled environment he would want her to see Sousuke in. These things require good timing.

“Young child,” another Elder chides, “you are out of line! Your seat at this table is honorary at best, as are all of yours, need I remind you. You do not know what is best for our people, for those of us who have lived through more hardship than you will ever know—”

“ _Child?!_ I refuse to be silenced!” she presses, dropping a knot in Makoto’s stomach. Nagisa’s as well by the looks of it. “These are our very lives! Our futures! They are all my family too!”

She is so ferocious, so impatient and aggressive when it comes to matters of the heart, it is often too much for the Council and has gotten her perilously close to being permanently removed from the voting chambers as of late. For whatever reasons she keeps close to her chest, she has become restless and careless. Makoto prefers a certain sly, slow burning subtlety to his manipulation of the Elder opinion. Gou would not recognize subtle if it tied a camel to the stables and moved into her home.

The oldest woman scowls. Makoto doesn’t care for her, to say it kindly. She replaced Haru’s grandmother after her passing when they were all children, and has been nothing but horrible to them since Haru refused to carry on the tradition as a descendent of one of Iwatobi’s founder families, and rejected his seat when he came of age.

He nominated Gou, an outsider, in defiance of the Council’s often hypocritical treatment of the foreign-born. They accepted it so they could merely say they were inclusive without actually being so, not realizing at the time she was not as docile as she seemed, and have been bound by their own traditions for nearly a decade to keep her there. But they will eventually find a way to push her out.

The community pressured the Council into accepting Nagisa when his seat opened up, for they love him so much. And Makoto is considered natural born though he is also technically an outsider; he was too young when he arrived to have any meaningful memories of his life before. The Elders always liked him, and brought him on themselves, and depend on him to temper the others and present lukewarm solutions to any and all conflict which arises. He’s been groomed and manipulated his entire life for it. Makoto despises it, but he goes along with it for the sake of peace.

“You absolute wretch,” she spits. “Some dead whore’s daughter—”

Gou stands taller. “You will not speak to me like that, Elder.”

“I have earned the right to speak how I please thank you, and you do not belong in this room, and you do not belong with these people. I believe I speak for us all when I say that you may leave.”

He’s heard enough. Makoto stands abruptly, followed by Nagisa. As he assumed, this went nowhere very quickly. It’s best to leave and allow boiling tempers to simmer. “If that’s how you feel, Elders, then we’ll also excuse ourselves for the time being. This is not a productive use of anyone’s time.”

“We expect a more humbled respect from you, Makoto.”

He shakes his head in disapproval, indignant anger close to rupture. “As do I of you. She is a part of this community same as any of us, and we are not children.”

Gou glares a fire into him, and storms out without seeking the last word. The five Elders watch in tangible collective judgement as Makoto and Nagisa follow her. At some juncture, Rei also decides to leave, tailing them as they make their way down the main artery of the settlement. While not a Council member, he ends up at more of their meetings than not due to his expertise in seemingly everything.

“Gou!” Makoto calls. “Please wait.”

“Not now,” she says, stopping in her tracks and whipping around to pin him down with that unrelenting glower. “You especially, not now.”

“We can talk about this. There are options—”

“That’s not why. I don’t need you speaking for me. You never stand for anything so don’t start now at my expense.”

He flinches from her involuntarily. “Gou, I didn’t. Please, I was merely agreeing with you.”

“I don’t need your petty reinforcement!” she protests. “They treat me as lesser as it is, Makoto!”

“Well I won’t sit there and let them say those horrible things about you!”

“Let me handle my own affairs! Don’t meddle!”

He shakes his head and forces himself to step back. It’s too much, he has enough to be concerned with and earning Gou’s scorn is counterproductive in the grander scheme of things. “You know what, I’m sorry. I got angry. It was not my intention to undermine you, you have to know that.”

She purses her lips and glares at the ground. “I know. I _know_. I’m sorry too. I just— I don’t know how much more of them I can handle. They silence me at every opportunity and you make it worse by kowtowing to their expectations.”

As much as they have tried to push her out and have failed, as much as she has resisted, Makoto knows her resolve to fight against their will wavers. She already does not live within the main community by her own self-imposed choice. At every turn they dismiss her concerns, her suggestions, her insight as an outpost dweller. It would indeed be easier for her to give up her seat and allow someone less aggressive the spot. Her deep seated unhappiness with the way things are here is just another variable for Makoto to juggle. “I know. I don’t like that I have to either. But we have some time. Let’s rest on it, and we will approach it together with clearer heads next we meet, all right? No Elders.”

She nods her agreement and takes a deep and calming breath. “No Elders. There has to be a solution.”

The opportunity lays itself at his feet. Makoto could tell her there may be.

The thought ignites a panic. He says nothing. It’s still too much for one day and it’s not time. He’s not ready to be responsible for this.

Gou embraces them all in departure and walks towards Nagisa’s home, where she stays when she visits. She will likely leave before dawn to return to her own, or Makoto hopes she will. It is a smaller, outpost settlement of about one hundred people she stumbled into representing simply because she possessed a voice and an opinion where the other settlers did not. A natural born leader is damnably right.

As she turns, Makoto finally sees it, albeit a few days too late: a pin of thorns affixed to the band of her hair tie he’s either never noticed or she’s never worn before, the same as Sousuke’s. If Sousuke presents himself as the sultan’s closest confidant, and this is a pin presumably only those who are closest would have, then it’s the last piece of evidence Makoto needed to be sure his claims are true. She is the sultan’s sister, she is royalty, and she is sheltering herself here. Makoto’s truly never seen nor met another Matsuoka; he would not have known just looking at her. Nagisa knows because he’s seen them, Haru presumably knows because he noticed something was off and acted on questioning her in private. How long have they kept Makoto in the dark about it? Is it because they see him as the Elders’ untrustworthy puppet?

He can choose to be upset later.

He’ll have to bring them together. They’re already on a collision course to meet somehow; if Sousuke made it this far he won’t give it up. It may be inevitable that they reunite, but Makoto will decide when they will meet.

Now that it sinks in as an incontrovertible reality, the gravity of his decision is ever more stifling. He barely knows Sousuke. To his mild devastation, he barely knows Gou. And now a blind-faith choice to trust a man he should fear could forever alter, well, everything. For everyone. Between the two seas. Beyond, likely. To be felt by generations after he’s gone. His control of the situation is tenuous at best no matter what he tells himself. All because he dragged a dying man out of death’s grasp as any sensible person would’ve.

Who, as Makoto’s spaced out after Gou’s departure and has forgotten about momentarily, has been left unattended to for the better part of the day now, and could really be getting into anything he pleases. Milling about the town… to run into Gou before Makoto’s ready to allow it to happen...

Why must everything always fall apart simultaneously?

He trips over his apologies and notes of departure to a doubly concerned Nagisa and troubled Rei, and hurries down the road.

* * *

 

Sousuke’s petty concerns are threefold.

He was how many days outside of a bath, the gash crossing his abdomen is one painfully annoying inconvenience, and since the majority of his wits returned to him that afternoon, so finally did his appetite.

He promised Makoto he wouldn’t leave, and he’s a man of his word. He’s just finished taking care of the bath, and the remaining two problems are both directly and indirectly addressed by flame, which he has access to.

Makoto keeps stocked an impressive dry pantry. Served food by others his entire life, Sousuke is no cook and thus has no use for any of it. He’s halfway through cooking a small pot of plain rice, not so greedy to take more than what’s enough to stave off starvation for the moment, and just beginning to heat through the sole iron poker he could find to attend to his other issue. He’s not self-cauterized before, though he was taught how as a means of survival. It’s a last resort, but he can’t afford a wound which won’t close nor one that hinders his mobility as much as this.

The least those treasonous infantrymen could’ve done was cut him somewhere less delicate, or made sure they’d finished the job. Half-wits.

His anxiety raises alongside the temperature of the poker; this is really no choice a man should have to make. But he thinks of Rin, and how the longer he’s away from him, the less he can be sure Rin is safe. Sousuke would trust Seijuurou with his life ten times over, and anyone looking to hurt Rin would have to go through Sei, which while no easy feat, is still not impossible. He can’t waste time.

Given the task before him, Sousuke is looking forward to that plain and boring bowl of rice afterwards.

He gives it another few minutes to heat through and then plans to get through it as soon as possible. Doubtless Makoto will not approve of it in some way; the man tends softly to a fault. Sousuke is certain he is watched over and provided for through the night. Any time he’s stirred, it has been due to Makoto’s ministrations. An adjustment here, a redressing there. He hummed a tuneless song which permeated Sousuke’s dreams or lulled him back to sleep if he woke into that twilight place. He measured Sousuke’s fever intermittently, at his forehead and at the angle of his cheek. Now the events of today, when he could not get him unfastened from his side until the threat of something worse came his way. He has fussed and _fussed_ over Sousuke and to what end?

Sousuke loses his thoughts to a sudden dry _pop_ from the fire. Just as well; they’re only clouding his mind with confusion and robbing him of his focus. The fire isn’t robust enough to turn the poker red, but it should still get the job done. Grimly, he lifts his borrowed tunic and assesses the damage for the nth time that day. About the length of his hand, it’s irritated and freshly scabbed. He’s done his best not to tear it again, but it is still so perilously sealed. The rest of his wounds only require their bandages or aren’t severe enough to mind.

Using a potholder, he wields the iron and allows himself a miserable groan as he sits cross-legged on the floor near the simmering pot. He leans back to make a flat plane of his stomach, and moves his arm where it looks to be the most complete angle to get this done with in one press. He takes a deep breath—

“What on earth are you doing?!”

—and promptly drops it in surprise, fire-side searing across the wound and making a fine _X_ of it, all topped with a startled-skinless-turned-agonized howl. Makoto’s flinging the rod from him in one moment and back on his feet and frantically skimming a shelf across the home in the next, cursing ceaselessly and colorfully all the while.

Sousuke gives his handiwork a look and a grunt as it pulses new pain. A true botch job: the laceration is as it was, only now there’s a bright red and blistering brand crossing it instead of laying on top of it to seal it better, and he’s left with two wounds. “Could you have gone with an entrance less dramatic?! That fucking _hurt_.”

Glass bottles and pottery clink and clamor. Makoto whips around with his prize in a clenched fist and stalks back to him, drops to sit cross-legged facing him, and pins Sousuke down with a murderous glare. “You stale walnut, what were you thinking?!”

He balks. Sousuke’s been called many things, but the scathing, unadulterated admonishment behind Makoto’s contribution to the list moves him rather high up in terms of offense. “Not all of us have the time to wait around and have our bodies sing-songed back to health!”

“Oh, so branding yourself with a fresh new wound speeds it up?!”

“It was meant to seal the one I have before you screeched at me like a cat in heat!”

“Cauterization stems bleeding in an emergency! Neither of those conditions apply to you! What, if anything, do they teach you in that palace?!”

It must be a rhetorical question, as Makoto silences whatever retort Sousuke might put together with a commanding and anticipatory swat to the side of his one drawn up knee. Worse, Sousuke snaps his jaw shut in response; a submissive subconscious self at the helm he did not authorize.

Makoto unseals the small jar in his hand. “Lift,” he instructs, gesturing to the tunic. Sousuke must pull a scrutinizing face, because Makoto sighs tiredly. “It’s a burn salve. It will protect you from infection and ebb the throb. Do you really not trust me by now?”

That irritating cloudiness blurs the edges once more. “This is hardly a two-person affair. I can administer it myself.”

By the indignation lining his frown, this was not a response Makoto is accustomed to receiving. He looks between Sousuke and the jar unable to bridge the disconnect, and settles for placing it on the floor between them. “Right. Of course.”

The salve has a cooling effect on his fingertips. He lifts the tunic and taps the medicine gingerly to just the very top of the burn, equal parts displeased by the discomfort caused by just this lightest pressure and relieved when the scorch of it chills as intended. He doesn’t know how much to use, but like hell would he ask now. “It’s all unnecessary,” he mutters. “All this doting. I don’t need a handmaiden.”

He focuses on his task, and not on the fact that he’s immediately ashamed of his ungrateful words. Out of his line of sight, he listens to Makoto stand and leave him to his task to retreat to some other area well away from Sousuke. How quickly he reverts to what he knows, after all that work for friendly conversation earlier. He forgets he isn’t among uniforms trained to be cold and solely concerned with their duty, or with Rin where such personal boundaries, even to have the most casual conversations, cannot be so blindly crossed without a taxing amount of due diligence and planning. His rejection must read as a personal slight to Makoto, when it’s really a matter of training.

As he spreads the salve down his burn as carefully as he can, the shallow hiss of his breath is the only sound in the room. He finds he hates the silence even if he asked for it. It reeks of a hopelessness he’s trying to mentally outpace, and Makoto’s radiating vexation with the whole affair is oppressive.

“I’m sorry for my childish ungraciousness,” Sousuke says. He considers the task done and drops his tunic, setting the half-used jar off to the side. The stick of the fabric to the salve is uncomfortable. “I’m not used to…” He trails away. Not used to what? His mind provides no explanation. “...This. I worry for my sultan, I need to speak to Gou, and that has made me impatient.”

When he dares to look up, Makoto is in the process of gathering candles to light at the fire beneath Sousuke’s cooking rice to combat the creeping darkness. He handles it as thoroughly as he handles everything else, making sure he lights the tallest ones first so they’ll burn down to be more even with the shorter ones, then takes care to set them so no corner of the home is without a warm light.

It’s actually quite a beautiful home for only being one large room, eclectically decorated in styles from around the region Sousuke recognizes some of, but has mostly never seen. One half of it is clearly Makoto’s, with indulgent comforts like extraneous pillows and peculiar implements with no recognizable functions lining the walls and resting in intricately woven baskets of a quality even Rin would have trouble finding. His bed is a pile of silks, for all Sousuke can tell. The rugs on the floor are so fine and detailed, they’re borderline priceless. For desert dwellers, they possess a staggering wealth.

The other side of the home is clean and tidy, a sole mounted shelf of carved children’s figurines depicting various creatures overlooking the simple sleeping cot. The furnishings otherwise are sparse compared to the decor on the walls and rugs to cover the bare floor, with chests for clothing and linens and not much else in terms of surfaces besides a low table to eat at.

Makoto stops at a basket nearby the fire and rifles through some mystery items. “No, you’re right. Haru doesn’t like it when I fuss either, I just don’t always realize it’s happening.”

He assumes then that Haru is the other occupant of the home and doesn’t lead their conversation away over it. This must be the same Haru who felt Sousuke was better left in the desert, and the same Haru he may have to eventually run from, and the same one Nagisa can get to do anything-except-this. He can safely say he is not looking forward to meeting him should it happen. “I haven’t thanked you for what you’ve done. I’ve only complained. So, thank you for saving my life.”

“Oh,” Makoto mutters idly, tucking his chin close to his chest and clicking his tongue when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for in the basket and moving onto a large jar next, an agitated _where did Haru_ filling in his pause, “anyone would’ve.”

“Would anyone have awoke to resituate my blankets halfway through the night?” Sousuke teases.

Makoto’s head snaps up, face immediately flushed and eyes wide. “I— a comfortable, peaceful environment is conducive to better healing, you know. I was being practical.”

“I liked it,” he admits with a shrug, hoping the confession mends the rift he tore somewhat. “The best infirmary care I ever got before this was an extra spoonful of broth, maybe, if they didn’t forget to feed me altogether.”

“That so?” he responds distantly distracted. Makoto finds what he’s looking for in the form of a pouch. He turns to check on the rice, seemingly unconcerned with how it got there. “Hey, at the very least put some on for me too.”

“Sorry. I figured I’d muck even that much up. I never learned to cook either.”

“No worries. I barely can myself. I mean, I can, it’s not bad, but… Well, anyway, this is why—” He dumps the pouch into a bowl and sets it between them to share as he sits close, a smile too large on his face to be totally innocent. “—dried goods exist.”

It’s all fruit, mainly figs. “Dessert, you mean.”

“Who has to know? It’s a special occasion.”

“How so?”

Makoto shrugs. “You didn’t die, so that’s nice. It saved me the effort of a body removal. Then you turned out to not be as evil as you could’ve been, which also saved me the effort of a body removal as I would’ve had to kill you if you were. Before you killed me first, that is.”

Sousuke laughs despite himself. “A bit morbid, aren’t you?”

Makoto chews on a fig and hums. “We don’t hide death out here. It’s everywhere and natural, you can’t run from it. So it’s sort of silly to pretend it doesn’t happen when it does both in front of and to us all, don’t you think?”

“More than you assume, maybe.”

“I try not to assume. A lack of assumption is what allows me to pick up wanderers in the desert.”

Sousuke laughs again and portions off a few raisins and apricots to one side of the bowl for himself. Figs aren’t meant for him. Makoto looks to him expectantly, perched and ready to listen to whatever Sousuke cares to divulge. He can’t say anyone’s ever taken an interest in knowing a thing about him, save Rin who already knows it all having been there for most of it.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever strikes you to share.”

“All right. Fine. For whatever reason, my mother couldn’t keep me. She left me on a river bank within a few days of my being born.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Or she did me a favor, depending on the perspective.”

“Who saved you?”

“A servant brought me into the palace grounds and in short, I was raised there alongside the heir to the sultanate. Just one time of a few where it was certain I would die before some inexplicable human intervention. I’ve never understood it, the gods must find it amusing.”

Makoto doesn’t laugh like Sousuke expects him to. He looks confused. “That’s a funny way to see it. If you are meant to die, you will. If you survive, you weren’t meant to die. There is no human intervention. We aren’t that powerful.”

“If you hadn’t found me I would be dead. Just like on the river bank, and any series of training mishaps I’ve been involved in.”

“For every you I find, a dozen more likely die elsewhere under similar circumstances. For every treated injury that heals countless more which received treatment do not. Pre-determined fate does not exist, it is only a culmination of tiny, insignificant factors all colliding together in one decisive moment to determine life and death. For all we can know, the winds veered me ever slightly off course and placed me into a vantage point looking down into the dune I found you in. In that case, the wind is your savior, is it not? We are just the puppets.”

He frowns. “That doesn’t reassure me of anything in the least. I prefer to be my own master.”

“It’s terrifying,” Makoto agrees. “I’m not one for subordination either. I think about it too long that I’m not really in control, my choices aren’t my own, and it frightens me. Others here embrace it and let it move them with the currents and call it freedom. I can’t. So I eat more fruit than I should, I trust more than I should, I forgive more than I should, I share food with a man I’m told my whole life is my enemy in lieu of dumping him out into the street like I should, so that I can at least say at the end of the day I kept fate on its toes. I can say I am alive on my terms.”

“Does it work?”

Makoto lights up, as if Sousuke washed ashore precisely where Makoto hoped he would after shoving him into this churning sea of crippling self-doubt. He raises his brow, leaning in just enough to make it personal, and Sousuke’s found the sun he thought had set already sitting high in the sky behind Makoto’s eyes and smile. “Well… are you enjoying the fruit?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He leans back, but not all the way. His smile slips, as Sousuke is close enough to see the something special, small, and thoughtful which replaces it. He would otherwise ask Makoto why he looks at him so fondly so soon when he knows so little, and further question why it keeps Sousuke firmly where he is, but the situation has reversed itself, and words are suddenly troublesome, the way they make space where Sousuke no longer desires it.

“Then it works,” Makoto takes care to say quietly. “I wanted this, no matter what I was being told I should’ve done. And now you’re enjoying yourself… we both are. Strange, isn’t it? I’ll always prefer a friend to a dead man.”

How fragile he is to be moved by something as simple as friendship. Rin is the only friend he has, and Rin is forced as Sousuke is to keep a stifling distance, for their mutual safety. How selfish he is to prematurely allow any dormant seeds of desire to sprout roots in this world with a mission unfinished. Sousuke’s body aches with every breath and his heart is heavy with worry. His burdens, his duty, his fears, are much to bear.

Yet he also savors the sweetness before him and within him, after days of grit in his eyes and mouth and years of deprivation, he sighs from his lungs a warm and dry air he’s never taken for granted, and he breathes a moment where he is simply alive. Not in spite of death and for no greater good. This is not a perspective he has ever had the luxury of seeing from, and here he’s met a stranger who’s brazenly close enough to whisper a damning secret to his ear without speaking a word, a secret which has been kept from him his entire life: _you are allowed to want, too._

“So…” Makoto moves a fig over to Sousuke’s side of the plate, the movement idly unintentional and fret with nerves. Sousuke has a _yes_ poised on his tongue, whatever it may be for. “Would you like to see something after we’re done here?”

“Change of heart about me all of a sudden?” Sousuke wonders.

“Opportunist,” he reminds Sousuke. “How often does this sort of thing happen, hm?”

He could ask what Makoto means by it, but takes a bigger interest in the mystery. At first, he had questions. Now his mind is tranquil. Perhaps the best thing about Makoto is how little Sousuke knows, and does not need to know to feel comfortable with him. Makoto is a welcome reprieve from knowing too much; Sousuke wants more of him.

Sousuke reaches for the fig; the world can wait.


	3. Chapter 3

They move carefully under the cover of night. The harvest moon is full and rich.

Sousuke moves slowly, and perhaps Makoto shouldn’t have forced the exercise on him, but in his experience a walk can do a world of good for a sore body. They’re bundled in thick robes with hoods to stay warm and concealed. Makoto’s is a famous face in the valley, and Sousuke’s is a foreign one. Fresh air must come with concessions even if the townspeople have turned in for the night.

Sousuke’s novel awe reflected in his eyes and on his catch of breath as they move between the homes and through the common areas warms Makoto further.

“I’ve never seen homes,” he remarks distantly. “I see makeshift hovels on the streets, and run down dwellings, and orphanages, but never homes.”

They’ve come to stop at one of the oldest stone homes which rests at the center of the valley. The majority of the structures, including his home, are made of clay brick, but these original houses of wood and stone stump Makoto considering the materials are not easily accessible. The Elders move into them when they are bestowed the title, and Makoto finds it an asinine demonstration of status. Clay homes stay considerably cooler.

Makoto didn’t account for local sightseeing in his spontaneous plan, but Sousuke’s thoughtful appreciation is worth the delay. Actually, he accounted for nothing. The idea struck him and wouldn’t leave him, and he chose to indulge it, either as a result of sticking his head in the sand to avoid a looming dread or because Sousuke’s proven himself a person worth confiding in during what is proving to be a profoundly isolating time.

“The palace is a home, albeit a large one.”

“A prison. A lavishly comfortable prison, but a prison nonetheless.”

Perspective is a funny thing, Makoto thinks.

“Come, so long as you’re still feeling all right, there’s more than just houses to see.”

Sousuke runs his palm flat along the wall and pushes off it to fall into step next to Makoto again. “You were born here?”

“No,” Makoto answers. “I was brought in as a child. I don’t know where I’m from.”

“Did some bleeding heart stumble across you in the desert as well?”

Makoto smiles in good humor. “That may’ve been preferable, but no. Haru’s caretaker, his grandmother, bought me actually.”

Sousuke looks at him in shock. _“Bought?”_

“Slavers off the sea,” Makoto confirms. “When she was well and could still make the trek for trade. No idea how I ended up with them or what brought them to port; I was only a few years old, and I don’t remember it.”

It openly disturbs Sousuke. He sets a grim jaw and looks back to the road. “I often forget there are lands which sanctify worse atrocities than ours do, making husks of men.”

“I turned out all right,” Makoto jests. “Though I’ve always wondered if I was found alone or if I left a family behind. I can’t imagine a human runs cheap; I could’ve just been, you know, the cheapest to rescue? Maybe it was by weight.”

A number of years have gone by since Makoto last brought it up. It upsets Haru when he speaks so cavalier of it, but it’s difficult to feel the proper way about an experience you don’t remember. Sousuke now sports that same blanched, perturbed grimace that Haru did. The connection amuses him. Sousuke clears his throat. “Oh. Maybe.”

“Anyway I wondered, but I never asked, so she never told, and now I’ll never know. Fine by me, I say. We’re better off not knowing everything.”

“Like wherever you’re dragging me to?”

“Right. But unlike for our mysterious origins, some patience will get you your answer.”

They walk over shallow, idle chatter to keep the cold dark at bay. Homes steadily give way to salt bush and acacia trees as they reach the outer limits, and soon only by the grace of a full moon are they able to see where they’re going at all, no more lanterns or lamps illuminating the cracks of doorways which face the road. The path walks them out towards the wall of the canyon, and up a gentle switchback. All the while the path takes them upwards, they keep pace with each other, until the conversation succumbs to the sheer natural silence only found in the parts of the world without people.

Whatever possessed Makoto to take Sousuke to this place must be the same demon that sent his and Haru’s feet across a bed of hot coals at their last summer solstice, the same one that once raised a defiant knife to the throat of a Sano scout who got too close, the same one that quelled the shaking in his knees long enough to let go of the ledge and dive to the bottom of the oasis to the northeast which sits on sacred and guarded grounds. It is a spontaneous fire in his belly, which warns him of danger while it coaxes his hands open to receive it and challenge it.

The path is less intentional and more a matter of where it is smoothest to walk. They’re lead into a gorge where the moon stays perfectly overhead between the two natural walls, and even for Makoto it is a thing of wonder that this night of any of them boasts such perfect circumstances.

The stone on each side stretches impossibly tall and slate flat. Their breathing echoes upwards. Sousuke stares into the moon transfixed, distracted to the point that his arms have fallen limp and no longer tense with worry near his injuries and his air of eager curiosity has dissipated into a soft satisfaction.

An upcoming gentle curve in the gorge indicates their destination.

“We’re close,” Makoto says. “Don’t spoil yourself for the surprise.”

It breaks the spell holding Sousuke to the sky. “Really? You want me to close my eyes like a child being given a gift on his birthday?”

“Of course I do. I’m offended you’d even ask.”

He rolls his eyes, but shuts them just the same, and Makoto guides him by way of fingertips at his elbow.

Makoto wants to see it as Sousuke does, so he keeps his eyes to the ground as the gorge widens out into its expansive natural end where the redwall rises higher yet in a semi-circle, enveloping the alcove in a near-dome. He faces Sousuke to position him just so, in the center but far back enough to see the entire far wall, as a partial view just won’t do.

The moon has followed them here too, now off to the west. It has breathed in the stars around it, vacating the rest of the sky of its shimmer, and sighs the glow of the universe into this one spot. Makoto thinks cosmically of all this because here, this insignificant space, is a sacred thing to him which has given him clarity many times. When he has been unsure, lost, or afraid, the ancients carved into the stone stand over him in oppressive, stalwart judgement and force him to look in at himself find his own answers. The other tribesfolk believe it them cursed ruins of idolatry and avoid it. Makoto has never entertained petty faiths.

“Well where’s the surprise? The backs of my eyelids?” Sousuke goads after some time of them standing still as Makoto tries to grapple with why he brought Sousuke here, when he’s only ever brought Haru once before and long ago.

There’s a kindred spirit within him, a steady warm and crackling flame of experience Makoto so innately understands and wants to float his palm over. Maybe that’s why, or maybe it’s deceptively simpler than all that, and Makoto just knew Sousuke would look breathtaking in moonlight. And god, does he. Whatever it is, these are the thoughts of the fearless and the reckless, and Makoto does not come here to hide from them.

Naturally then, Makoto kisses him, because it’s the sprint over hot coals act of the moment. Sousuke returns it as if he made and shelved the decision to do so hours ago, breathing in deeply through his nose while he leans into it and holds onto the front of Makoto’s robe for stability. It’s brief and humbly quiet, like all acts of bravery are.

Sousuke opens hazy eyes, and remains close enough to whisper. “That was not all that surprising.”

Breathlessly, Makoto laughs. “No? Thankfully, I have a backup plan.”

He steps to the side of Sousuke to place them hip to hip, revealing the four goliath figures sculpted into the red rock. They are enrobed in folds upon folds, layers upon layers, with jewels and decoration adorning every inch of them. They face out and peer down into the same focal point at the center of the semicircle, all wielding swords, half on the left side and half on the right. Behind them are four pillars inscribed with characters in a language Makoto doesn’t know.

Their expressions, a permanent state of strength, intensity, and courage, weigh down on whoever stands before them. And in the center, dividing two and two, is an altar, enshrined in impossibly overlapping archways and raised off the ground on an ornate dais. A narrow set of steep set-stone steps leads up into it, and whatever is contained within the shrine behind the altar will always be unknown, protected by a slab of thick, immovable stone, sealing it away for eternity. And though it is all weathered by too much time passed for Makoto to comprehend, it is as intimidating and inexplicably alive as anything else he knows in the world.

Sousuke’s gasp is sharp and deep and raw. “Who are they?”

“Dead, forgotten… they’re no one, really. Not anymore. They fought together long before we picked up weapons and remain bound to a duty no one remembers.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“They are that. In truth I find them terrifying.”

Sousuke glances at him sidelong and skeptical. “What _aren’t_ you afraid of?”

“Very little, as a matter of survival.”

Sousuke turns his attention back to the figures. “Odd then that you were never afraid of me.”

Already, the moonlight begins to pull away from the top of the wall on its journey to the other side of the sky. Soon it will be too dark to navigate safely home through the jagged rocks peppering the floor of the fissure, and so soon they need to leave.

And soon this place will be forgotten altogether, when Makoto can no longer stay where he is. After Sousuke is ready to reassume his servitude, after Makoto’s people have run out of water, after Iwami falls to Sano, or perhaps after Makoto gives into the cowardice nipping at his heels because of all of it and runs as far as he can take himself to escape this inevitable heartbreak.

“No,” Makoto says through a tight throat, “I wasn’t.”

But he should’ve been.

* * *

 

It’s in the early dawn, long after they’ve returned and talked themselves to sleep and the candlelight has been extinguished, that Sousuke awakens with no air in his chest, and a weight settled over his body crushing it out of him. The fury, the raw hatred of it, is too dense to understand. The silks beneath him are too soft and give him no traction to scurry out from underneath it, and he cannot feel his body besides.

In the back of his mind, he realizes what he’s done: he did not leave space for death and it has turned on him for it.

Death’s long fingers wrap around his neck, not only cold but ravenous for his warmth. It drains from him. He tries to reach for Makoto who sleeps soundly nearby, where death should be, but his arms will not move. He gasps but the inhale won’t travel past his sealed airway. His lungs bunch up and constrict, the hollow between his collarbones collapses, the dead weight bears down and breaks his ribs one by one, snap by sickening snap, and he can’t scream. Three dark guardians stand stoically behind Sousuke’s maker, observing, detached, with bejeweled skeletal hands resting on the pommels of their downturned swords.

_a late harvest_ , it whispers. _too late._

Death’s voided face blurs as Sousuke weakens. Ropes and gobs of tar break away from it and spatter around his head. The constriction does not relent, he cannot make a sound. There’s nowhere else to go.

_too late, it’s too late_

A blinding light, a horrific shriek, the void takes on Rin’s defining eyes of fire, now overcast and cloudy, grey lips to match, parted and dry.

Sousuke manages a blink, and they’re gone.

He clutches a hand over his overworked heart while he swallows all the air his body will allow in audible gulps. He trembles, he’s soaked through with sweat, and he darts his gaze around the room frantically in search of his attacker. There are no attackers, nothing followed him out of the canyon. There’s only Makoto, barely visible in the pitch black, sitting up from where he fell asleep and calling over to him softly. He’s out of reach, so far. Sousuke’s instincts scream at him to grab onto something, anyone, him. But his rationality, while weak, stubbornly clings to dignity even as his hand slides across his bedding towards the only thing that soothes him here.

“Sousuke,” Makoto says. “It’s only nightmares.”

“No, it’s too late,” Sousuke rasps. “I’m too late.”

“For what?”

“Everyone. He’s dead. He’s gone.”

Quiet enough Sousuke doesn’t hear it, Makoto closes the gap and simply sits near him. He doesn’t touch him save to pry his hand from his chest by his wrist and have him lay his palm flat instead, quickly bringing his hands back to himself once he does. “Who’s dead?”

“Rin.”

“Surely you can’t know that.”

Sousuke turns his head to catch Makoto’s eyes through the dark. “I _saw_ him.”

“I promise it was a nightmare.”

Never has he dreamt of something as horrific and real as that. “I know what I saw.”

“Haru gets those sorts of terrors. They seem very real, but I assure you they’re not, else according to him, I would’ve been dead ages ago…” He lifts Sousuke’s outstretched hand now to return it to his side, and Sousuke belatedly realizes he doesn’t let Makoto’s fingers go until it’s too obvious to call an accident. Makoto doesn’t react to it one way or the other, but he doesn’t pull away. “You’re worried and stressed. A taxed mind plays tricks.”

He finally manages one slower breath, and his panting recedes. “My mind could do well to fuck off and let me sleep.”

Makoto huffs his amusement. “Can I help?”

“No,” he sighs tiredly. “I apologize for waking you.”

“I’m glad you did if it means you didn’t have to suffer that longer.”

A cold vacancy grips him. Why doesn’t Makoto get closer, why hasn’t he kissed him again? Sousuke is aching, he is distraught, and Makoto will not come to him as he has been, as Sousuke has come to take solace in. And it strikes him then within this window of vulnerability where he can deny nothing: every one of Makoto’s words, every decision he’s made, ensconces Sousuke more completely than the moment before it. It leads him off a trail well traveled, step by step, and the way back is no longer visible.

He expects Makoto. He is too comfortable here with this man. He has strayed too far from his path, and Makoto saw it for the insurmountable problem it was before he did.

The dawning is bitter and numbing and sad and enraging all at once. The slightest exposure to a quieter, more peaceful life and he buckles to it without resistance. Here he does not need to schedule secrecy with another person to feel human, he is allowed to want, and to be taken care of. He is allowed to decide to be selfish and he has made that decision to a fault. He is wretched and a fool for not having noticed it sooner.

“I’m feeling better,” he mutters, unable to trust the integrity of his full voice. “Go back to sleep, Makoto.”

“Well, I… of course… _but_.” Makoto flexes his fingers to remind Sousuke of his hand still securely in Sousuke’s grasp. “Um.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sousuke curses just as he yanks his hand away with more irritation than is necessary. “Good night.”

Makoto doesn’t move right away. Sousuke tastes his apprehension on the air. And it’s feather-light at first, the same fingertips ghosting at his hairline, and coming to cradle his jaw. When Sousuke doesn’t turn away, but sighs woefully and turns rather sadly into it, Makoto is braver the second time he does it, and Sousuke is weaker too.

Makoto’s second kiss is hungrier, and crashes against Sousuke as a wave against a ship in a storm. Sousuke reaches across his chest to grab Makoto’s upper arm and pull him closer, over him, insistent until Makoto submits to the full request and skims a knee carefully over Sousuke’s middle to pull into a straddle.

The hands roaming down the column of his neck now are a far cry from the gentle healer’s hands which have tended him in a time of need. Now it’s a time of shameless want and Makoto holds back none of his desires from Sousuke. It’s in the just-shy of fiery friction pulled down Sousuke’s skin by his fingertips and in the dizzying pressure ground down by his hips

He’s never been kissed or touched like he matters, not like this. He isn’t a faceless client or a inhibitionless drunk mouth or a last resort on a month-long training drill. Plenty have wanted the companionship, but no one who could have him has wanted him because of who he is, and those who have wanted who he is could never have him.

The way Makoto nuzzles their noses and never parts too far from him to breathe his name before delving again for Sousuke’s mouth, the way he eagerly pushes his fingers through Sousuke’s hair when Sousuke returns his kiss and hikes his linen tunic up to secure his grip at the curve of Makoto’s bare waist, the way those muscles ripple and contract, tantalized by Sousuke’s touch and reverence— this is life. Sousuke worships his new faith so completely.

This is all their making, all of this edict and scripture, and it can never be for anyone else. 

* * *

 

The stables sit up high on an arid hill overlooking much of his home. A long time ago, their valley would flash flood with rain, and it was the safest place for the animals, upon which they depend for their livelihoods. Makoto’s never seen that happen in his lifetime and now it seems he never will. Hundreds of people mill about down below through the streets and the market. Their settlement is not large, but it isn’t invisible either. It’s been where it is for five generations, with only a scant handful of founding lineages remaining.

There are greener pastures to the north, quite literally, by a few days’ travel. The bountiful ocean lies a short jaunt to the east, where Haru has gone to trade for dried fish and exotic goods from across the water. The intimidatingly high walls of Iwami to the south provide governed protection and security so long as you behave, though their atrocities are many even towards those that are loyal, as Nagisa is evidence of. It is a risk one takes for such comforts. To the west lies an ever greater expanse of desert, leading to plains, then the forests, and finally towards the opposite coast into the unknown where Gou lied about hailing from.

In truth, there was always more incentive to leave their home and forget all about it than there was to stay. Makoto would be lying if he claimed he never wandered further away than he meant to, rested in bustling towns and outposts a few days beyond his intentions, wrapped himself up in the arms of others for just a taste of something else— their experiences, their stories, their lives— beyond the valley. But he always disentangles from these dead ends, and he always returns home. It frightened him just how much of a personal challenge it was to remove himself from Sousuke’s arms at dawn break, drawn in as he is by the man, but there is still life to attend to. For now.

His home will die. Their bones will disintegrate and catch on the winds to be carried off to those far off places they all swore they’d never go, until there is nothing left but the crumbling shells of their houses and a wealth of verbal history echoing between the walls no soul will ever hear again.

Indeed the world is bigger than Makoto and all of his dreaming done while wrapped in Sousuke’s arms.

“If Gou leaves with him, I’ll never see them again. They’re a royalty of some sort. I’m not a person who belongs in such dealings. They’ll want to Elders to negotiate with, if they’re not meaning to simply slaughter us and be done with it once the sultan finds out who we’ve been sheltering.”

Makkou doesn’t look Makoto in the eye. Makkou doesn’t reply whatsoever. Makkou is a camel.

“No, you’re right. Gou would never turn on us.” He sighs. “Sousuke would never... would he?”

Makkou raises his head, swallows his mouthful of gnashed salt bush, and goes back for more.

“Of course not. Well I’m stuck here,” he continues wryly. “You’ve seen the way they depend on me. I’d be the last to leave and even then, an Elder would still be disappointed in me for not being grateful to my home enough to agree to die with it.”

A warm breeze rustles the shrubbery and carries a plume of dust across the holding area. Makkou grunts and brays between his bites as he always does. Makoto can hardly distinguish it from the wails of the other camels in their stalls nearby. Noisy things. He leans on the post next to his mount and folds his arms across his chest as he waits.

“I would do it if I felt I had to.”

Saying it out loud is something horrible. His heart lurches, his panic spikes, and his next exhale trembles. “I don’t want to feel like that anymore, Makkou. I want to feel like I did… like I do _...._ ” He swallows the lump in his throat. “Do you think Haru would understand? I won’t go anywhere without him, but… what else is here? We have an opportunity to build something new.”

He falls into a somber quiet. Fear has ever kept him from asking Haru if this is all there is for them. Nagisa is content to be among friends, the place holds no meaning to him. Gou is a constant enigma, on the periphery and always looking outward, though now Makoto understands why if she has been in hiding this entire time.

But Haru considers himself a steward of the desert, and a pillar of defiance against the greed of warring nations. Makoto could not possibly ask him to consider their enemy as a way out of this armageddon, and worse do so with Sousuke— a stranger and a tool of force, here to break up their family— standing next to him.

“All right, you,” he says softly and small. “That’s enough. It’s time.”

He walks Makkou, after the ever-eternal struggle which comes from parting his friend from his coveted shrubbery, back to his holding pen. Last he checked he needed to re-fill his and Haru’s water cisterns at the well, and with Sousuke partaking to bathe and eat and drink going on three days now, it’s certainly a necessity, but already he feels guilty for needing to. He’ll re-fill one, and try to ration it better. It will do absolutely nothing to prolong the inevitable collapse he is destined to attend. For all of his boastful mockery of fate, he cannot outpace nor delay this fact.

At some point Makoto’s thoughts took a turn for the hopeless. Downtrodden and with a weight on his back he can’t shake, he takes himself home and half wishes he’ll open the door to nothing, and Sousuke will have taken it upon himself to leave so Makoto does not have to say it’s time to go.

But Sousuke waits for him obediently as he was asked to yet again, sat at the low table in a new ensemble from Makoto’s chest of clothes and entertaining himself with Makoto’s wooden chess board and pieces and playing what looks to be a game of checkers against himself with it. A half-eaten square of flatbread rests besides him.

Looking at him hurts so badly. There is nothing else to use to explain the feeling, no comparison. Just a deeply scarring ache where his words used to be. When he departs for Iwami, is it Sousuke who Makoto will mourn the absence of or will he mourn the opportunity to escape as he watches it disappear into the horizon line, slipping through his fingers?

“It’s chess, you know.”

Sousuke looks up unsurprised by Makoto’s entry this time. His eyes are alert and intelligent, no longer heavy and dark. He’s healing. He’s found his vigor once more. Makoto feels even worse for it. “Yes I do know. Rin always promised he’d teach me and, well, he hasn’t yet. But I know checkers.”

“How are your wounds?”

“Markedly better, barring the burn.” Carefully, Sousuke moves the pieces back into their wooden case and shuts it, then keeps his eyes downcast over it. “Well enough to move.”

“I’m glad,” Makoto says, bereft of any joy.

Sousuke sighs, and by it down comes the scaffolding they should never have started building. “You have to take me to her. I’ve wasted enough time.”

It should hurt that Sousuke says it that way, but Makoto knows he’s right more than he wishes he wasn’t. “We can leave at next dawn.”

“We can leave now,” Sousuke insists. “It’s still early.”

“And in two hours the air will be blistering and stay as such until sundown, especially across the sands.”

“I cannot stay, Makoto.”

“It’s too danger—”

Sousuke hammers a fist onto the table top, startling Makoto back a step. “I said I cannot stay!”

He gapes in stunned silence for a moment before his mind can supply him a reply. “I—I’m not trying to stall you! It is unwise to travel midday!”

“ _Travel?_ Take me to her now or point me in the right direction; either way, I won’t wait another moment.”

Makoto rubs at the back of his neck and breathes short through his nose. “She is nearly a full day’s ride away, Sousuke, I need to secure you a mount and pack supplies at the very least and do so without being noticed.”

Sousuke clicks his tongue bitterly. “A full day and you didn’t think to tell me it?! A passing mention, perhaps?”

“I apologize,” Makoto retorts, “it didn’t really come up between dressing your gaping wounds and intervening on your attempt to immolate yourself for your cause.”

When he stands to meet Makoto eye to eye, he’s rigid and overbearing. It isn’t the man Makoto’s come to know over the previous few days. Worse, it isn’t a demeanor which fits Sousuke either; he wears it awkwardly and held out in front of himself. “You knew she was far and you could have been helping me get supplies together all the while but you took the time instead to dote and nag on me?! To drag me out into the night and into some goddamn fairytale?!”

Makoto burns with unjust shame and anger both. Should Sousuke regret his actions, it is uncalled for that he takes it out on Makoto, who has truly been focused until now on caring for him first. And to turn down his aid and demand it within the same breath is an egregious arrogance which strikes a rare chord of fury within him. If he wanted to distance himself from Makoto, there were certainly less cruel ways to do so. “And where was _your_ sense of responsibility? Am I now in charge of reminding you of your chain to your lord? I owe you and your sultan nothing, Sousuke. I am not your keeper.”

Sousuke sneers outright, the curl of a growl on his lip. He rounds the table dividing them, an aggressive, accusatory finger outstretched which Makoto briefly envisions snapping. “You have kept me here and you kept me from the truth as well!”

“If that’s the case then you also chose to stay! I cared for you, I _do_ care—”

“You’ve enabled me,” he accuses with a shaky pitch as his bravado falters, “to be _weak_. You have muddied my purpose, you have endangered my people, and by extension your people—”

“And you may blame me until we’ve wasted the day but at the end of it, you are still neither helpless nor incapable of self-discipline so tell me, Sousuke: what are we really arguing about?”

An anguish overtakes Sousuke’s anger, a physical reflection of Makoto’s own haunt. He is striking this way, when he allows this range of emotion to set on his heavy brow and churn the sea in his eyes. It’s a bitter thought that Makoto would cling to how beautiful he is as the rest of him slips away.

“Why did it have to be you?” Sousuke laments.

The warm breeze from earlier billows in from outside. Behind him, where the closed door should be. At the same time, Sousuke looks past him and blanches white, jaw set and eyes wide. It’s just as good a time as any that this would happen. Makoto closes his eyes, and breathes deeply for one last moment of relative peace before all hell breaks loose.

He turns to face him. “Haru, I can… oh.”

How quickly his life unravels when fate chooses to send Gou with him, too.

* * *

 

Sousuke’s ears ring.

In front of him somewhere, the earth rumbles. Gou, Makoto, and Haru swing their arms, point at him, at each other, shout, argue, talk maybe. But he doesn’t catch any of it, he can hardly focus. He is above himself, looking down on the scene. He remains suspended until Gou forces him to come down as she charges past Makoto and towards him, and the ringing gives way to Makoto’s warning call in his direction.

Unceremonious and wordless, Gou shoves him square in the chest. Her strength surprises him. He stumbles backwards until his calves hit the low table and his balance crumples entirely, dropping him onto his back and sending the chess board and box clattering across the floor, but only after his arm catches a sharp corner.

“How dare you!” she screams as she stands over him.

Still dazed and overwhelmed, Sousuke only concerns himself with getting back to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he says vacantly. “I’m sorry, Gou. I— _fuck_.”

She is truly alive.

She is not the scared young girl he and Rin watched go, no longer. She is grown and fierce and stunning, she stands before him with tears of fury welled in her eyes and strong, sand-worn fists clenched impossibly tight at her sides. She is healthy, thriving, her very own person, and still the same Matsuoka Sousuke remembers at the same time. If there were ever a time where she looked like she belonged in his world, it’s long since been left behind. She has commanded the room with her wrath; even Makoto and Haru cease their heated argument and give her the floor.

“How dare you seek me out now.”

Sousuke clears his throat to hide his mild hurt. He hadn’t expected hatred from her. “I did not know you survived, Gou. We were told your caravan was ambushed and its travelers cut down. You never arrived in Sano, and peace negotiations unravelled from there. I came for you as soon as I found out you may have lived.”

“And then what? Fucked around with him?” she accuses and gestures back to Makoto who immediately looks away in shame from all three of them. Despite the shift in focus, Sousuke struggles to suppress his want to go to him and stand by him because he does not deserve to look so lost and alone. “How long have you been here?! Why are you here?! To sell me off to another Sano butcher?!”

“I would never— we were children!” Sousuke argues back. “Rin had nothing to do with it!”

“You didn’t say _anything_ ,” she heaves. “You just watched! _You_ were a child? I was a girl, younger than you, whose own father decided was mature enough to carry the reputation of the sultanate on her back and neither you nor Rin did a single thing about it!”

The only thing that makes this burden bearable is knowing Rin will not have to experience this first dreadful encounter in the same way Sousuke is. Justified or not, he alone will take on all of Gou’s pent up anger and all of Rin’s internalized guilt and pray that he shoulders enough of it to spare them these feelings towards each other on the day they meet again. He can handle it, that has always been his true duty to this family.

So he does what he needs to do, not as Sousuke anymore but as a fiber in the fabric with an oath to uphold. His audience an afterthought, he drops to his knees and touches his forehead to the floor before her, palms flat on either side of his head. “I am deeply sorry, Gou. Please understand. Rin has never been the same. I cannot explain to you how entirely his guilt haunts and hinders him. I beg you can one day decide to forgive us. We were supposed to protect you and we failed.” He looks up from his position. “But I will not lie to you about why I’m here on behalf of Iwami: we need you. The people need you. He needs you.”

She sniffles once, and then the resultant indignant sob shaking the air breaks Sousuke’s heart worse than when she was sent away. “That’s not fair,” she cries. “That is not my home anymore, Sousuke. Those are not my people.”

He lowers his forehead back to the floor. “I know. But he is still your brother, and this is all I could think to do.”

“Gou,” Haru says warily.

“Don’t,” she warns, then nudges Sousuke’s hand with her foot. “For gods’ sake Sousuke, get off the floor.”

With a deal of effort as his body reminds him it is not yet enthusiastic to be shoved over low tables or near prostrated for extended periods of time, he labors to his feet. Gou’s eyes are red-rimmed and miserable but she holds onto any further tears. She presses her fingertips to her forehead and sighs a steadying breath.

“I am not who you came here for. I’m an outpost trader now,” Gou continues. “Nothing more or less. Regardless our history, I cannot do what you’re asking of me. I am neither experienced nor prepared to help him rule.”

Sousuke chews his lip and briefly flicks his gaze to Makoto. Does he betray Makoto’s trust if he reveals what he was told in confidence? But it’s irrelevant by now; he needs to do it. His is the life of a servant. Foolish was he to allow Makoto to talk him into thinking otherwise. “This land is dry. Your people will need water, will they not? Were you to come with me, you could help decide where we will relocate you.”

She takes a stupefied step back just as Haru takes an aggressive stride forward. “You would blackmail me now to force me to return?”

“N-no—”

Haru sports a cold fury deadlier than Gou’s. “Gou won’t be leaving and neither will you.”

Makoto lurches forward after him and secures him by his wrist. “Haru, please! That isn’t what he means!”

“How can you know what he means, Makoto? He is a stranger.”

“I’ve come to know him!”

“Oh, you think you know him now? Are you this naive after all this time when you have seen firsthand what these people do?” Haru wrenches his hand from Makoto’s grasp. “You endangered us!”

“He won’t hurt any of you!” Makoto argues back. “He only wants to help. The sultan is not his father nor his uncles, Haru. They are not Sano. They want unity, they want to help us and in return we will make them a stronger front _against_ what we denounce.”

“I swear it to you,” Sousuke adds.

“And what good is your false fealty to me?” Haru scoffs in disgust. He looks between Gou and Makoto as he continues: “We are just easily exploitable war labor to them. Pawns, Makoto. Why can’t you see that and why must we always come to this argument? We are safe here, in our valley, on our own—”

“Our valley is dying, Haru!” Makoto interrupts. “It will kill us if we stay.”

“Stop it.”

“I won’t. How much longer will you ignore it? Why can’t you believe there are good people in the world too? Kind, wonderful people who can teach us more than you can imagine. We are being given an opportunity to fight back against this fate. Your grandmother took a chance on everyone she met. That is how I try to live, too. You trusted her. Why won’t you trust me?”

Haru glowers at Sousuke, making it clear the only thing standing between him and evisceration is Makoto. Sousuke cannot find a matching contempt within him to fire back at Haru; were he in Haru’s position, he knows he would be just as uncompromising. He would not entertain a stranger asserting such statements in his space like this, not for a moment. He would defend his home to his dying breath. Haru would make a fine soldier. His loyalty is pure and earnest and something even Rin could trust with his life. It is not Sousuke’s fight to convince him, though.

“Then you go with him,” Haru says bitterly. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you pester me and prod me for relentlessly. You hate it here. So leave us.”

Makoto is visibly distraught by his words. Gou covers her mouth, confliction with the entire affair in the stiffness of her shoulders. It is a foul hope that takes root within him then, that Makoto could come with him. It is so selfish a desire that it makes his stomach churn in self-contempt.

“No, Haru. That isn’t what I want at all, not without you. It’s for us all.”

“You’ve grown attached to your pet and now you don’t want to give it back. Leave with it if we are not enough for you.”

“Haru,” Makoto gasps. Sousuke grinds his teeth to keep from getting involved, knowing it will make it worse, and struggling to swallow his pride and let it be anyway. “That is not true and you are cruel to say it!”

“This is not the issue we need to address here and now,” Gou interjects.

She looks to Sousuke, hating him so thoroughly for what he’s done. He can tell by the way she tears up, by the way her ferocity drains from her face much the same way as Rin looks more often than he does not these days, the longer she is forced to listen to this impossible problem tangle further. He has given her a false choice and taken her life from her as she knows it by virtue of saying anything at all. She never would have been able to say no, because the burden of her family will always be with her as it is with Sousuke, as it is with Rin. Her heart and her pride, like Rin’s, are too big to suppress. Sousuke’s actions are unforgivable, but Sousuke’s actions will save many, and he can find peace with it in time.

“What choice have you left me?” she confirms to him. “Your intention or not, you have forced my decision. You’ve taken my life from me after I’ve already lost one. I never wanted to go back to a place which would use me like that again.”

He bows his head once more. “I know it is despicable. I stress I did not know what else to do.”

“It will affect us in time anyway. Whether we act now or later, no matter what happens, if I go or don’t. The future for us is bleak maybe, but it is unwritten, and I possess a powerful pen by birth.”

It’s Haru’s turn for heartbreak, ensuring no one walks away unscathed. “Don’t do this, Gou. We can move further away, into the forests. You don’t have to submit to this.”

“You know as well as I those lands are not ours to invade, Haru. Do we become hypocrites and displace and harm the innocents there to make space for us?”

“Of course not. We can negotiate.”

“And by the time we get to that point, if we are even able to foster rapport and negotiations before we all starve, we will still lose half our people on the journey to exposure and disease as well.” She moves her attention to Makoto, who avoids meeting her searing intensity head on once more. “Tell me something, Makoto.”

Makoto nods. “Anything.”

“This was all your meddling.”

“It was.”

“So you will assume the responsibility of it and should this decision come to harm us, it will be our blood on your hands. So I will ask you and you alone: do you believe in this? Do you believe in him?”

Sousuke holds his breath when silence grips the room. Makoto has clearly delineated since the beginning that his desires and the needs of his people are two different things. And while in his heart he knows Makoto would say yes to him as Sousuke was inspired to say yes, to lead and serve others is to sacrifice that self and to do so without regrets.

Finally, Makoto straightens his back and looks ahead of himself and between his friends with resolve, and then to Sousuke with something softer. “I believe in him.”

“Then...” She trails away, and regards Haru apologetically when she speaks again. “Take me to my brother, Sousuke. I would like to see him.” Her voice tightens, her lip trembles, and she drops her pitch to a shaky whisper. “So, so much.”

“I will. As soon as we can leave.”

It’s a victory, a break. Not a clean break, as proven by Haru’s storming out, but Sousuke is the beggar. Gou overcomes the distance and embraces him as wholly as she previously scorned him, and Makoto smiles at him with a strength Sousuke admires and cherishes. As he envelopes her, breathes her in again, the first whispers of hope dare to fight back against the voice of despair which has worked tirelessly to paralyze him so. He has achieved something special here.

And not without help.

He owes Makoto his life many times over, and it’s an immeasurably sobering truth to remember that it was never his to give away.

* * *

 

It’s sundown, and Makoto finally finds Haru at the mercy of four golden guardians.

He sits next to him on the dusty, rocky ground. Haru does not acknowledge him, and continues to methodically pluck at strands of dry grasses, making a scant pile of the refuse. Makoto takes a moment to appreciate the sunset bringing the redrock to life, and allows the thought that he was wrong about it. In truth the swordsmen didn’t need to be remembered before him, and won’t need to be remembered after him, to stay standing. This place will continue to glow by day and shimmer by night, season after season, regardless his presence to witness it, and the knowledge quiets an old anxiousness within him. He always could have left. He always chose to stay.

“I have dreamed of living on the sea, you know,” Haru says after the first guardian falls to shadow.

“Really?”

He nods. “I have dreamed of trading at the port, of stowing away on a ship, of sailing away, many times. Eventually, I would find a ship of my own to do as I wish. You are not the only dreamer between us. I think you forget it.”

“Something about it doesn’t quite fit though, does it?” Makoto muses.

“No,” Haru answers. “And I wondered why that was for a long a time. But I realize… it’s missing you. It’s missing Nagisa. It’s missing Gou. Everyone. When it’s just me, it’s just a fantasy about an empty ship.”

He hums. “So you understand why I stay even as I yearn for something more.”

“Hm.”

“I apologize for my dishonesty, Haru. Not for what I did, because I did it for our people, but for lying.”

A long pause, and a correction Makoto inherently anticipated: “You did it for you, Makoto.”

There is no reactive flare of denial from Makoto, no tense crack of animosity from Haru. It’s a fact as opaque and as sure as the wall of guardians before them. Sousuke appeared as a lifeline out of the valley which Makoto recognized and tugged at with all that he is. Kissed with all that he is, wants with all that he is. He didn’t plan for how far it would go so soon, but then again his grip on his own fate has proven tentative at best as of late.

“It was reckless of me, I know.”

“You are overdue for it,” Haru says. “Not only bodies, but our hearts die too if we do not tend to them, even ones as big as yours.”

It is an affirmation Makoto didn’t know he needed until it warms him all the way through. “Thank you, Haru. That means more than you realize.”

He mumbles a bashful dismissal. “And I’ve known perhaps longer than you that we need help. But I didn’t want to accept it. Least of all from them.”

“I know,” Makoto says. “It was not my plan either.”

Haru sighs and draws his knees to his chest. “Go with him, Makoto.”

Makoto turns to him in surprise. “Absolutely not. I go where you go. I barely know him.”

“And you want to know him more. You represent us the best. Go with him, and fight for us. Then come back and tell us how we will be okay.”

“And you?”

Haru snorts. “You’ve agreed to effectively stage a coup without any input from anyone. The Elders are not going to stand for it. Nagisa and I will have a lot of work on our hands to win over the people so they receive you and your direction warmly when you return. You were always meant to lead us, just not in the way that they thought.”

“You mean this, Haru?” Makoto breathes, dares to ascend.

“You don’t need my permission,” Haru says with an eyeroll. “It’s your choice. But yes. I also go where you go. You can’t deny what calls to you forever, Makoto. You’re right, it’s an opportunity for us all. But mostly it’s for you. That’s okay. I know you’ll come back for us once you see where it takes you.”

Makoto rubs a palm over his chest where his heart swells with a sort of foreign and unfamiliar joy. “I will, I promise. I’ll figure this out.”

“Just…” Haru frowns, a deep disturbance in the pull. “Makoto, swear you will be honest with me now.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“I am serious about it. Tell me the truth.”

“Haru, please, just say it.”

He shuts his eyes in prayer. “Tell me you did not fuck in my bed.”

Makoto’s gaping gasp and their shared laugh boom and echo up the guardian wall.

* * *

 

Sousuke’s own impossible victory is delivered in a handful of words: _I’m going with you, too._

They’re mounted on their camels, after a journey of too many days to keep track of, atop the crest of the tallest hill leading down to the northern gates of the Iwami palace compound. They’ve crossed the sand, made it through the outskirts, traveled along a length of the Iwami river, and toured the farm flats. Gou looks upon it with worry, Makoto with wonderment, and Sousuke with weariness.

Simply looking at the dreary gates reminds him of his and Rin’s hopeless isolation, the danger, the stress, of being so alone. His pulse races and his lungs constrict, and it will be everything he has now not to gather Rin in the dead of night and take them all away from here, far from here, where they can start over in a place that has never heard of these lands or these problems. If only, if only. Right now his only concern is ensuring Rin has remained safe in his absence. Until the gate opens, he’s just as likely dead as he is alive. Gou is just as likely the new sultana as she is a new advisor, and that would call for certain civil war.

In any case, that uncertainty doesn’t deter Gou.

“I’m ready,” she says, unfalteringly resolute, and starts down the hill.

Makoto leans over. “Me as well, but for a real bed.”

He shakes himself of his thoughts, and attempts for the umpteenth time to convince himself they’re not alone, not anymore. It will sink in eventually. Sousuke’s life might not be all his to give, but Makoto chose to meet him halfway, and be here with him until such a time might be won. Or so he allows himself to dream, for Makoto plans to stay no longer than a week to start. Though if he looks at it the right way, this fledgling alliance is a brilliant excuse to visit often.

“I have just the space in mind.”

“Near you, I hope?”

Sousuke grins. “I did grow fond of the fussing.”

**Author's Note:**

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